CrowdRiff – a visual marketing platform for travel and tourism brands – has launched Travel Stories — the world’s first connected story experience for travellers.

Travel Stories – which provides a mobile-first, visually immersive experience for travellers to plan their trips – was launched in collaboration with Destination BC.

Now live on HelloBC.com, Travel Stories enables Destination BC to automatically publish stories created by partners within its all-new BC Story Network in alignment with its Content Commonwealth strategy – a shared approach to content marketing, built on common tools, processes, and expertise. Through Travel Stories, Destination BC is creating a seamless narrative for travellers that makes it easy for them to research and more effectively plan their trips to BC.

Participants in the BC Story Network include 29 regional and community destinations within BC, such as Kootenay Rockies Tourism, Tourism Kamloops, Tourism Whistler, Tourism Golden, and Destination Campbell River, as well as associations like British Columbia Golf and corridors like Scenic 7.

Marsha Walden, CEO of Destination BC, explained that, “The BC Story Network is the first of its kind in Canada, and a great example of how strong partnerships are driving innovation in BC’s tourism industry.”

Walden pointed out that, “Consumer behaviour is shifting rapidly, and this innovative partnership with CrowdRiff has given Destination BC and our partners across the province the ability to inspire potential visitors through a format that’s seeing exponential growth, globally.”

Stories are one of the fastest-growing formats in the history of digital marketing. Since the inception of this highly visual and easily digestible format, the growth has been staggering. Snapchat, where the Stories format originated, has more than 200 million daily active users; and there are an estimated 500 million daily active users that consume or create Stories on each of these platforms: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp – with more users trying out the feature every day.

Powered by CrowdRiff, Travel Stories enables Destination BC and its tourism industry partners to capitalize on the explosive growth of the Stories format, as well as significantly expand their ability to scale and share content across the destination in powerful ways not previously imagined.

According to CrowdRiff co-founder and CEO, Dan Holowack, “We are seeing a convergence of trends when it comes to the new stories format, driven largely by rapid consumer adoption and search engines like Google investing in the format.”

He pointed out that, “Traditionally, marketers in the travel ecosystem have only focused on their particular brand within a traveller’s journey. We saw the opportunity to create a connected experience for the traveller that brings together a variety of travel partners – from destinations to attractions to outdoor adventure and activities.”

And Holowack added that, “As one of the most innovative travel brands in the world, Destination BC was the perfect partner to bring Travel Stories to life.”

Since the Travel Stories pilot launched this summer, participants in the BC Story Network across the province have created over 800 stories, resulting in over 1.4 million impressions and 145,000 story views.

Go to crowdriff.com/travel-stories or visit http://www.DestinationBC.ca/ for more.