All posts by Christina

For PAXnewsWest: TravCorp showcases the culinary side of Thailand

598c9f673b76a764793510The Travel Corporation and the Tourism Authority of Thailand hosted a media dinner in Vancouver last night to celebrate a new season of Thailand itineraries from TTC's brands.

Citing Tourism Industry Association of Canada statistics showing that 35 per cent of current travel is based on culinary tourism, and 50 per cent of travellers say food influences their travel decisions, The Travel Corporation made food the prime focus of the evening – from the family-style Thai dinner to the presentation by Instagram food photographer and cookbook author Dennis Prescott.

Read the rest on PAXnewsWest.com

For Hootsuite: Social Listening: What it is, Why You Should Care, and How to Do it Well

Imagine the powerful business insights you could gain from an organic form of market research where the focus group was made up entirely of people already engaging with your brand or your industry. Sounds pretty great, right?

That's exactly the kind of business intelligence you can access when you implement a social listening strategy to track, analyze, and respond to online conversations about your brand and your industry…

Read the rest on the Hootsuite blog

For PAXnewsWest.com: Visit San Jose highlights wine and tech tourism in Vancouver

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Representatives of Visit San Jose met with travel media in Vancouver last week for a wine-themed dinner to highlight the region's unique tourism opportunities as a top-notch wine region on the doorstep of Silicon Valley.

Over glasses of award-winning wine from Ridge Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, PAX spoke with Laura Chmielewski, Visit San Jose's vice president of marketing and communications, about this forward-looking Northern California destination…

Read the rest at PAXnewsWest.com

For the Vancouver Courier: Street art goes mainstream in Houston, Texas

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They say that everything's bigger in Texas.

In Houston, that's certainly true of the hats, the boots and the servings of barbecue. But the saying also applies to an unexpected public art program that's taking over the streets of downtown. Recently, 100 international artists transformed 20,000 square feet of wall space into city-sanctioned street art for the second annual Houston Urban Experience (HUE) Mural Festival. Add that to the 25 walls painted for the inaugural festival last year, and it's clear that there's a Texas-sized appetite for street art in H-Town…

Read the rest on the Vancouver Courier website

News reporting for REW.ca

I've recently wrapped up a two-week stint covering a staff vacation at REW.ca, the online arm of Real Estate Weekly. Here are the stories:

For PAXnewsWest.com: Travel Nevada showcases a state’s worth of stories in Vancouver

Travel Nevada welcomed about 70 travel agents and media to a Vancouver networking reception last week, where they had the chance to meet with 12 partner organizations representing tourism opportunities in the Silver State.

"The partners are here to raise awareness of things people don't know about,” Chris Moran, Travel Nevada's public relations specialist, told PAX. "We're hoping people give Nevada another look. We think the state as a whole is a good place to visit – we're eager to show it off.”

Read the rest at PAXnewsWest.com