Quick, what’s the top scenic drive in North America? The Icefields Parkway, according to one American travel website.

AllGetaways.com, a Seattle-based travel information web service, recently announced its first annual Top 100 rankings for tourism destinations across the continent. Amidst the romantic lodges in the Adirondacks and the historical walking tours of Chicago’s downtown core, the 232 kilometres of highway between Lake Louise and Jasper made it on the list in third spot overall and was considered number one in the scenic drives category.

“It’s great,” said Scott Eady, the president of Jasper Tourism and Commerce. “It’s great to get unsoliticted attention like this. It’s a good surprise to open up your email and see that.”

For Eady and other members of the local tourism industry, the heartening news this high ranking brings along with it is that Jasper is a popular and relatively well-known destination south of the 49th parallel. The Parkway was the only Canadian destination of any sort to crack AllGetaways’ Top 100. Eady is pleased with Tourism and Commerce’s efforts to promote Jasper in the United States. 

“We attend the media showcases and the large industry shows, so we are out there,” he said, adding that Travel Alberta is a key player in promoting the Rockies as a destination region in other countries. Nowadays, Eady said, the task of promoting a destination to a distant audience is much easier than it was a decade ago.

“In the last fifteen years it’s been made easier for people to get access through the internet,” he said. “This shows that people are using the internet to find out about us.”

The positive response from Eady and his ilk has reached the AllGetaways.com office in Seattle, according to Rob Holmes, director of media development for the website.

“We’ve had some feedback; people were pretty enthusiastic up there,” he said.

While many travel publications, both traditional and on-line, put together rankings, these lists are usually based on the subjective opinions of a panel of editors or travel writers. The AllGetways list is based on user data compiled from the website, Holmes explained.

“There are a lot of lists out there but what we pride ourselves on is that this is based on data,” he said.

The website allows members to download chapters of guidebooks, a service that is provided in conjunction with some of the most prominent travel publishers in North America, companies that produce titles such as Fodor’s, Rough Guides, Falcon Guides and more. Using the viewing patterns of more than 350,000 users, AllGetaways.com first analyzed the number of unique page views for a given destination, then combined that figure with the number of downloaded chapters relating to it. After members downloaded resources from the site, AllGetaways.com requested that they review the destination on their return. The results of these reviews were combined with the “before” metrics to come up with a comprehensive measurement of destination popularity.

“No one else is doing what we’re doing,” said Holmes. “It’s an exciting list for us.”

This is the first year that AllGetaways.com has prepared such a ranking and the company is already considering improvements for the future, Holmes said.

“We’re thinking of adding a popularity ranking to run along with this one,” he said. “Another change could be making it dynamic. By the time October comes around, that’s old data and that’s what we want to avoid.” 

The fact that the Icefields Parkway has ranked in the top three will lead to more interest in the area, Holmes believes.

“I think it’s going to do that,” he said. “It’s a very well- known destination; Banff and Jasper are very well-known amongst outdoor enthusiasts. It’s the only Canadian spot in the top 100, and that puts even more emphasis on how great a destination it is.”