I described how we maximize exposure on Olympic related website. The next step is to drive people to our consumer website HelloBC.com where they can start planning their trip. The following chart is a conceptual diagram of our approach for driving traffic from these websites through referral links.

The Olympics are about stories. Stories related to athletes, the events and yes the host destination. The circles on the diagram represent these stories. Most are related to the sporting events and athletes (blue). But some are related to the host destination (yellow). These stories can send somebody down the path that will lead to visiting British Columbia.

We try to carry the destination stories through. Many broadcasters will run host destination vignettes on their TV broadcast. These stories are usually also posted on their website and media will often refer to their website for more info. And since the web doesn’t have a finite amount of space, there are more stories posted on websites. By offering ideas and support, most broadcasters have agreed to post links to HelloBC or one of our tourism partner websites to allow visitors to have access to even further depth, allowing us to continue the consumer buying process and get her one step closer to visiting BC.

The strategy is working so far. Visitors from referring sites have increased more than tenfold compared to peak traffic in the summer.