I'll start and then let the rest of my colleagues go on.
The marquee tourism events program was incredibly important to the festival. We received $3 million in each of 2009 and 2010, which basically doubled our marketing budget and allowed us to really reach out further afield to bring in international visitors. We see about 25% of our audience coming from outside of our borders.
Our strategy is to invest in our marketing activities to get beyond our borders and to tell people about the fabulous things that are coming up and happening in Stratford, but also, our strategy is to get out. When I talked about the Stratford Festival, you will noticed that I talked about all of the things we're doing to take our work outside of the festival and to garner attention and heighten awareness outside of our borders.
This has the dual purpose of bringing in visitors and also increasing national pride when The New York Times says, “This was the greatest production of The Tempest I've ever seen”. Hey, Canadians feel pretty proud of having the Stratford Festival in their country.