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Yokoso! (Welcome!)

A photo says a thousand words and a local photographer has a website full of welcomes to share with the land of the rising sun

It would be a 1992 photograph of skier Scott Schmidt dropping a huge cliff that would inspire a young Japanese man by the name of Toshi Kawano to eventually make his journey to Whistler.

Fifteen years later, it is ironically Toshi who is inspiring his fellow countrymen to visit Whistler through his own photographic work and a relatively new project dubbed “WHISTLERnavi”.

A professional photographer for the last 10 years, Toshi started by gracing the pages of several action sports magazines, including Transworld Snowboarding and SBC Skier. His work has been used in advertisements for such companies as Adidas, Quicksilver and Dynastar, along with a plethora of Japanese based publications and companies.

Shifting his focus to commercial photography, Toshi is now best known for his work for Whistler-Blackcomb, Tourism Whistler and Tourism B.C. His children have practically become the face of the Whistler Kids program.

Looking to become the bridge between Whistler businesses and the Japanese market, Toshi and Vancouver-based business partner Shinobu Kojima launched a website by the name of WHISTLERnavi.com last October.

For the Japanese, the Internet and brochures are the most important factors in making a decision about where to visit. According to the Canadian Tourism Commission, the percentage of Japanese travelers who consider the Internet to be among the most important sources of information for trip planning has grown nine-fold since 2000.

At first glance the Japanese market for Whistler may seem far from what it was 15 years ago, before the great economic “bubble” burst. Surprisingly though, Japan, a country of roughly 130 million people, still remains the third largest group of foreign visitors to B.C., behind only our neighbours to the south and the U.K. And the Japanese are the fourth largest group of tourists to visit Whistler.

Of Canada’s 386,000 Japanese visitors in 2006, 55.8 per cent entered directly into B.C. making up 4.5 per cent of B.C.’s total international customs entries, or 25.1 per cent of all Asia/Pacific customs entries to B.C. Japan is the largest Asia/Pacific market to our province and the country as a whole.

Although winter visitations to Whistler over the last five years have at times been inconsistent, a growing and relatively new trend is strong Japanese numbers in the summer, with 2005 being the strongest on record according to Tourism Whistler. Summer numbers from Japan are now roughly one-third of winter visitation, which is great news for local business.

Toshi and Shinobu hope to inform Japanese visitors of the sights and activities available in our mountain town and bridge the gap for local companies, where things can often get lost in translation. As Toshi says, “We have a great destination here in Whistler and I would like to see more Japanese visitors to come and enjoy the very place we call home.”

Toshi spoke to Pique Newsmagazine about his vision for Japanese tourism in Whistler and where WHISTLERnavi is headed.

Pique: Tell me how “WHISTLERnavi.com” came about?

TK: In the 2005-06 season, I saw a small Japanese-Whistler site which was created by one of my friends who had been in the Internet marketing industry before she came to Canada. It was small, but really well thought out and organized from a user’s point of view. Then I realized that there was no Whistler portal site for Japan. I thought that I could improve the site with my photography, which has been my profession for 10 years, along with my connections with the Japanese media and several tourism organizations.

So we decided to work together and we launched WHISTLERnavi.com on Oct. 25, 2006. (Navi stands for navigation and is a popular Japanese-English term, typically used for this type of site.)

Pique: Did the initial launch of “WHISTLERnavi.com” get the results you anticipated.

TK: Yes. WHISTLERnavi.com appeared on the top page of both Google and Yahoo Japan with the keyword "Whistler" in Japanese just two months after its launch. Since then, we have been receiving steady increases in the number of viewers.

After following up with Japanese tour guides, we have also confirmed most of the tourists checked our site prior to their trip.

The amount of information is growing as the site continues to evolve.

Pique: What are some of the current visitation trends and how do they differ from the past?

TK: People who know how many Japanese tourists there were back in the late ’80s and early ’90s say that they don't see too many Japanese tourists anymore. According to Tourism Whistler statistics, Japan is still in fourth place for the number of tourists, after the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Their report also says the number of FIT — Free Independent Travelers — is increasing rapidly. These people would have a greater chance if they do in-depth research on the net prior to their trip. Significantly, in the past couple of years the people who first came to Whistler back in the late ’80s as a couple, perhaps on their honeymoon, come back to Whistler to ski with their children, and then those people who came as a family start coming back in their retirement once their kids have grown up and have left home. So 40+, 50+ are the key ages.

Pique: How is your site unique from other sites about Whistler?

TK: Firstly, this kind of site can be run only by people like us, people who love and enjoy Whistler and live here everyday. Most of our bloggers are living in Whistler because they enjoy the lifestyle and skiing/snowboarding.

One of our hottest content pages is named “Taiyo's snow report”. He skied more than 140 days last season and updated his snow report almost everyday. We noticed his report attracts so many repeat viewers since it's always updated from a skier's point of view. It's more than just a web-cam view or just a snowfall or temperature report.

There are three kinds of information on our site. The first is static information, such as facts, geography, climate, access, history. This is very important for the people who come to Whistler for the first time.

The second is the live information I noted above, and of course, we have live web-cam and snow/weather information provided by Whistler-Blackcomb and other resources.

The third part is information introducing restaurants, activities and shopping information. It is one-three pages of “online Japanese brochure” which we translate/create and host.

Pique: What has been the reaction from local businesses in the first year?

TK: We were noticed right away by some keen business owners and by Tourism Whistler as a great way to promote their business in Japan.

A perfect example happened last winter, when Sno-Limo had a demonstration tour in the Japanese ski resort of Naeba. One of our bloggers uploaded an “experimental report” and we linked that article with Naeba resort-related sites right before their tour. We got quite a good response and so has Sno-Limo.

Another example is Whistler Roasting Company. There are many coffee lovers in Japan and (coffee) is a perfect souvenir, but they wouldn't check out the coffee section at a grocery store unless they knew about it.

The Naeba ski resort also holds an event called Canada Cup, which is like the WSSF in Whistler, and also there is a cafe named Whistler Cafe. The cafe is run by a Japanese company and supported by Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb. So we have a facility that we can make physical contact with our viewers in Japan.

We also started working with some Japanese tour companies/agencies in Whistler so that we can make a physical contact here too.

Pique: What's next for WHISTLERnavi.com and what are some of the challenges ahead?

TK: Our goal is to help Whistler businesses reach the Japanese market and help Japanese tourists reach quality information about Whistler.

We have been concentrating on building a high quality information site first for both viewers and our clients. The biggest difficulty is to show the quality of our work to our Canadian clients, since everything on the site is in Japanese. We would like to see an increase in Whistler-based businesses that start using us to approach the Japanese market. Most importantly, we enjoy Whistler and wish to share that feeling with viewers in Japan.

WHISTLERnavi.com’s clients couldn’t agree more.

“I think it's a great way to promote our camp, Core Ski and Snowboard Camps, as well as our ESL school,” said Turner Montgomery. “The site seems to be climbing in search engine popularity. Half of the traffic on our site, www.coresnowboardcamps.com, comes from Japan.”

The opportunity to experience nature is one of the top reasons for Japanese to travel abroad, and it’s also the main image Japanese have of Canada. So Whistler stands in a prime spot to benefit from Japanese tourism. And some of the best promoters of Whistler to the Japanese are a couple of ex-pats living in B.C.



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