Perfectly Paired | The BC Ale Trail & Tourismo
Perfectly Paired | The BC Ale Trail + Tourismo
The BC Ale Trail is one of Canada’s largest and most successful culinary tourism programs. It connects travellers with more than 220 breweries across 22 regional trails, bringing together craft beer, local food, accommodations and outdoor experiences throughout the province.
The BC Ale Trail moved its app to tourismo to create a more flexible and engaging experience for visitors, and a platform the organization could continue building on.
Challenge
The BC Ale Trail had already built a large and enthusiastic audience. The next challenge was keeping people engaged and giving them new reasons to visit breweries and explore communities across British Columbia.
The team needed a platform that could:
Encourage repeat visits and ongoing exploration
Support check-ins, points, rewards, quizzes, and seasonal challenges
Make it easier to launch new campaigns and experiences
Give participating breweries greater visibility
Measure engagement and demonstrate impact
Grow with the program without requiring a separate product for every new idea
Solution
tourismo gave the BC Ale Trail one flexible platform for managing its app, brewery content, and visitor engagement programs.
Gamification with a purpose
Visitors earn points by checking in at breweries, answering quiz questions, and participating in challenges. The experience turns digital engagement into a reason to get out and explore, driving real visits rather than simply generating app activity.
Seasonal reasons to explore
Programs such as the Views & Brews Photo Challenge and Fresh Hops Photo Challenge give people timely new reasons to hit the trail, discover breweries and share their experiences.
One platform for new ideas
The BC Ale Trail can launch new challenges, campaigns and regional experiences within the same platform, without purchasing and managing a separate technology product for each initiative.
Greater visibility for breweries and communities
Participating breweries benefit from dedicated profiles, app exposure and inclusion in province-wide campaigns designed to increase awareness and foot traffic.
Measurable results
Built-in analytics help the BC Ale Trail understand how visitors are engaging, demonstrate results to partners, and use those insights to strengthen future campaigns.
Impact
By combining strong destination partnerships, compelling content, and flexible technology, the BC Ale Trail has created an engagement ecosystem that keeps people exploring.
More than 25,000 registered app users
200,000 check-ins generated in two years
More than 500,000 points collected in a single year
More than two million website pageviews annually
Partnerships with more than 55 municipalities and destination organizations
How Does That Compare?
The BC Ale Trail generated more than four times as many check-ins in two years as the Bandwango-powered Bucks County Ale Trail publicly reported from 2019 to 2023.
BC Ale Trail: 200,000 check-ins in two years
Bucks County Ale Trail: 45,248 check-ins from 2019 to 2023
The comparison demonstrates what is possible when great content, committed destination partners, and flexible technology work together to keep visitors actively exploring.
The BC Ale Trail is no longer operating just one digital passport. With tourismo, it has a platform it can continue building on—launching new challenges, campaigns, and regional experiences that turn digital engagement into measurable visitation.