Flight Centre’s Best Travel Job Ever

Flight Centre Canada is hosting a search to find someone for what they call the Best Travel Job Ever.

Ever since Tourism Queensland in Australia hosted its popular search to find someone to fulfill their “Best Job Ever” as caretaker of an Island Reef it’s become a trend to host contests of this nature. The most luxurious, tantalizing, and globetrotting opportunities for some of the world’s major brands have presented themselves and they have all used social media to find and promote applicants.

In Vancouver we had several people make the final cut for the Island Reef job including Anny Chih. She didn’t end up winning but it looks like things have worked out for the best as she’s kept up a travel blog and continued to explore each continent on her own.

Working out the glitches that came with past contests of this nature the model has been fine-tuned over the years. It’s no longer about taking a year off to work for a tourism board. It’s more about getting a free trip and being armed with a video camera so that you can share your experience.

For the Best Travel Job Ever will be a Grand Prize Winner as well as a Fan Favourite winner who will each receive a trip to a secret exotic destination from Intrepid Travel & Air Canada, $2,000 cash from Flight Centre, an HD Flip video camera from Henry’s, a $500 shopping spree from Roots. Each of the six finalists also get prizes that include the video cameras, vacations in Europe or Asia, and also $500 to shop at Roots.

Videos with the most votes so far that have been produced by locals include: Fiona and SammyMac (see below).

I also enjoyed ChaseVlog’s entry since it’s a much-needed introduction to Mission, BC. I first learned about this contest when Flight Centre sponsored Vancouver Twestival but I have to give a hat tip to Eddy Vint who emailed me about his campaign.

Looking at the leaderboard there are about 3,000 votes for each of the top candidates so far and you have just over two weeks to throw your hat in the ring if you think you can muster a couple thousand votes. Otherwise, explore the site a bit and give your favourites a boost by voting for them.

The top 25 finalists as voted by the public will be announced May 3, 2010 and the selection process will continue until the grand prize winner is announced in August, 2010.