Hilton Head Island - Toronto Flight Launch Event

To celebrate Air Canada\'s new, seasonal flights from Toronto to the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, we brought a taste of Hilton Head Island to Toronto. To make an impact on the ground, the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Visitor & Convention Bureau (HHIBVCB) hosted a special event for Toronto’s influencers & travel industry colleagues. The event was held in the greenery-filled conservatory at Toronto’s iconic Casa Loma, a historic castle home to only the most exclusive events.

Guests enjoyed a photo booth, a fried chicken + waffles station, freshly shucked oysters, a terrarium building workshop, a shopping station of local accessories and branded oyster knives, and a silkscreening station for beach tote bags.

The event was captured by a film crew to create a promotional video for the direct flights to a Toronto market. Our target audience for the event included Toronto bloggers, media personalities, fashion influencers, and celebrities.

The goal was to promote and increase awareness of the destination and new direct flights from Toronto to the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) and to encourage Toronto locals to visit Hilton Head Island (HHI) for their summer vacations and beyond.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, we have not yet been able to launch our supplementary campaign landing page, digital media plan, or video asset that resulted from the live event. However, we still saw significant gains.

Our consumer event had a 113% attendance rate with more guests attending than our goal. Most free events can expect an attendance rate of 50% or more. Special guests included Nina Kiri of HBO’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Celeste Bouchard, Toronto socialite & cousin of tennis pro Genie Bouchard, Rita DeMontis of the Toronto Sun, and Elizabeth Fraser of Netflix’s Spinning Out. Our observations on-site showed that the majority of guests stayed at the event for upwards of three hours.

The HHIBVCB Instagram account achieved a 40% increase in engagements during the event compared to regular week nights. During the event, the @VisitHiltonHead Instagram account was tagged in guests’ Instagram posts 80+ times resulting in 70,000+ impressions.