OREANDA-NEWS. October 02, 2015. Vancouver International Airport (YVR) selected nine winners for its T-shirts to Paradise contest, sending eighteen people on adventures in Asia. This multi-platform media campaign inspired British Columbians to rediscover Asia as their next travel option by highlighting the unexpected in six destinations with direct access from YVR: China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and The Philippines. YVR airline partners including Air Canada, All Nippon Airlines, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, China Southern Airlines, EVA Air, Philippine Airlines and Sichuan Airlines donated a pair of business class tickets to designated destinations.

“T-Shirts to Paradise was a big hit at every community festival we visited this summer,” said Anne Murray, Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Vancouver Airport Authority. “To see thousands of eager contestants clamour for T-shirts and share their photos online was a great endorsement of both the popularity of the campaign and the allure of these Asian destinations served from YVR.”

The T-Shirts to Paradise campaign focused on several unique and less talked about insights for each destination, like hiking mist-capped mountains in China, surfing the best waves on the planet in Taiwan or snowboarding through untracked powder in Japan. The campaign ran from July 20 to September 13, 2015 and included traditional advertising such as Skytrain billboard ads, video and static ads on numerous websites and paid social media as well as community engagement with a presence at Celebration of Light Festival, Take-Off Fridays at YVR, The Fair at the PNE and Richmond World Festival.

Designed to inform British Columbians about the different countries and their unique offerings, the public was asked to choose a country and a corresponding t-shirt, take a photo, and upload it to social media channels to be entered to win two business class tickets to that destination. Out of 5,907 entries, 27 finalists were selected and participated in a competition to win the tickets. For more information about the campaign, visit www.TShirtstoParadise.ca.

YVR has strong linkages to Asia, with up to 134 direct flights per week to Asia at the peak period in August and the most connections to Asia in all of Canada and the second most in North America with 13 airlines flying to 11 non-stop Asian destinations. YVR is also the only airport in North America with service from four mainland China carriers: China Eastern, China Southern, Air China and Sichuan Airlines. The T-Shirts to Paradise campaign increased awareness of these unique offerings and will help YVR remain competitive as an airport.