A Jurassic Jaunt | Travel Drumheller & Tourismo
Firmly at the core of Alberta’s Canadian Badlands, Drumheller is known internationally for its prehistoric history. For the majority of folks, that history manifests itself as the Royal Tyrrell Museum — a massively acclaimed destination that draws dinosaur enthusiast (AKA: pretty much everyone) from across the globe.
While Royal Tyrrell rightfully shines as a major travel destination, the adjacent town of Drumheller naturally sees a percentage of that traffic by sheer proximity. But Travel Drumheller knew they could drive even more traffic by providing a richer, more interactive travel experience that truly made the most of the town’s quirky culture, unique history, and distinct geography.
A Dino-Mite Opportunity
Drumheller has long stood as a tourism hotspot in Alberta. But with an attraction as globally recognized as the Royal Tyrrell Museum, any destination would face the issue of tourists making the trip to see the museum, only to promptly leave the region directly afterwards.
A lack of geographical dispersion of tourist traffic outwards from the Royal Tyrrell Museum meant that local cafes, retail shops, and attractions in Drumheller’s core weren’t seeing economic benefit of the high volumes of traffic generated by the museum.
The incentive or outright roadmap for exploring outwards from the Royal Tyrrell Museum into Drumheller simply did not exist at the scale it should.
But, thankfully, Drumheller possessed the exact thing to thread together an experience that would do exactly that: delightfully retro and locally cherished concrete dinosaurs.
Blazing the Dino Trail with Hidden Content
These statues had the potential to be more than mere set pieces—they could become the connective tissue between Drumheller’s heritage and its economic future.
For decades, around 150 concrete statues of dinosaurs have been scattered across Drumheller. Charming, retro, and bristling with character, they’ve been a longstanding point of interest and hometown quirky-pride for decades. There had been attempts at creating a memorable experience involving these statues in the past, but Travel Drumheller knew a more interactive and engaging experience was waiting to be found…
Travel Drumheller teamed up with Tourismo to transform this latent potential into a town-wide interactive experience. The centrepiece was a self-guided itinerary — The Dino Trail— guiding visitors on a statue to statue journey via the Travel Drumheller website.
But while a point-to-point itinerary would, in itself, be a significant upgrade, Travel Drumheller’s vision was to create a digital scavenger hunt where visitors could actually engage with each dinosaur. To do this, they created dedicated QR codes to place at each dinosaur. When a visitor scanned any of those codes, they’d unlock unique animated content — a short animated video with a narrated story that told the story of that specific dinosaur.
This new structure transformed the statues into a cohesive, interactive, and rewarding journey around Drumheller. Of course, the trail’s vision was not just to connect a series of dinosaur statues — it was, critically, to drive more revenue across Drumheller’s many small businesses in the downtown core.
On one hand, the very nature of the trail does exactly that. By increasing foot traffic in the downtown core, that very foot traffic became more likely to visit adjacent small businesses. But in order to budge visitors towards stand-out businesses in the community, the online trail features restaurants, shops and activities beside the Dinos that are perfect for a family lunch, afternoon break or souvenir trip.
The Dino Trail’s “in the moment” interactivity came together quickly — but Travel Drumheller wanted to offer visitors with a tangible keepsake that they could cherish after the trip's end. While a competition points-based system was briefly discussed, Travel Drumheller instead opted to continue with the “hidden content” theme (but, this time, in physical form).
If any visitor scans all twelve QR codes across Drumheller, they’ll get invited to pick up a Dino Trail themed colouring book from the Travel Drumheller visitor centre. Easy to execute, it’s a physical rewards program that further incentivizes exploration — and prompts post-trip advocacy and word of mouth.
The best part? Creating and executing The Dino Trail took way less time than expected. Building a themed trail took the Travel Drumheller team took only a few hours, while developing interactive QR codes and a physical rewards program came together in just a few weeks.
Charming, engaging, and purpose-built to encourage geographic dispersion, The Dino Trail combined quick-to-execute visitor engagement tactics to raise awareness and drive traffic to Drumheller’s bustling downtown core in a radically new way.
Creatively Tying the Trail Together
While select components of The Dino Trail were simple to execute solely from the Tourismo platform, Travel Drumheller teamed up with Tourismo’s creative services team to make the experience a truly special one.
Working with Tourismo’s preferred creative collaborators, they took an active role in shaping the creative-side of the experience to reflect the Trail’s broader vision (and the Travel Drumheller brand). The team crafted original animations, authored children’s stories, and designed the coloring book—all elements of the engagement that became both the digital and physical rewards for participation.
For Travel Drumheller, that was a game-changer. Because, like any destination marketing organization, limited time and resources can make executing even the best plan difficult. Instead, Travel Drumheller were able to simply contribute to the ideation phase, create engagements in the platform, and let Tourismo handle the rest.
The result is a fully realized visitor engagement campaign that combines a handful of forward-looking marketing tactics proven to drive impact: themed trails, hidden content, and a physical rewards program.
A Very Successful Dig
The Dino Trail is a recent but critical campaign in evolving Drumheller’s tourism landscape and destinanation potential. What were once background curiosities became creative, engaging focal points for engagement, traffic, and revenue. The campaign is a prime example of a destination using what they already have, and further leaning into the elements of their local character to raise awareness and drive impact. The Dino Trail was not just about boosting numbers; it was about deepening connections—to stories, places, businesses, and memories that might have been overlooked. Drumheller’s quirky dinosaurs now anchor a visitor experience that is distinctly theirs.
