Fallon picked to drive Japanese tourists to Canada

TOKYO - The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) has selected Fallon Tokyo as its creative partner to help raise interest in the country as a destination among Japanese travellers following a protracted competitive pitch.

Phil Rubel (pictured), the agency’s chief executive and representative director, noted that the CTC has faced “huge challenges” in the market with the evolution of traditional tourism expectations.

However, Rubel added that with four distinctive seasons and a variety of potential holidays and activities, Canada was “better placed than most long-haul destinations to rebound in the Japan market”.

“Our challenge is to develop a way that would allow people to discover the elements of Canada that would be of specific interest to them,” Rubel said.

Commenting on the decision to appoint Fallon, Derek Galpin, the Commission’s regional director for Japan and China, said: “It clearly demonstrated its abilities to think about tourism from a very out-of-the-box perspective. They really stood out from all the other agencies we considered. Its strategic direction and the concepts it recommended truly caused a lot of discussion and debate, even among CTC’s selection committee. Nobody else was able to accomplish that.”

Details of other participants in the pitch have not been confirmed.

by David Blecken