THUNDER BAY – Catching the eye of today’s tourist takes a modern approach.
Travelers are looking for unique shots to share on Instagram and other social media outlets and seeking adventures to awe their friends and family.
Thunder Bay, while off the beaten path, can easily deliver, said Stephanie Reid, a member of the team who helped revamp the city’s new-look tourism website, the first phase in a complete overhaul of the municipality’s online presence.
As a result, there’s a heavy social-media presence on the new site, filled with dynamic photos and video of the city and surrounding region and, more importantly, updated and easily navigable links designed to make it more user friendly.
“This is what today’s market wants, Instagram-able places that nobody else has been, and that’s what we are to these places around the world,” Reid said, addressing the audience on Wednesday during the website unveiling at Wilderness North.
“Now we have a tool to share our destination with them.”
Beyond that, she added, is the business directory, which allows visitors to search and filter through more than 1,300 local businesses that might be of interest to tourists, from bait shops for cross-border anglers to restaurants for those who prefer not to capture their own food.
“You can read a little bit about them, you can see a Google map to where they’re located. You can click a get directions button and it will give you turn-by-turn directions to get to that place. It works for restaurants and attractions and hotels,” Reid said.
“It makes the experience of coming to Thunder Bay logistically very simple for anyone who wants to come here. There are no obstacles or barriers in the way of you booking your trip here. And that includes the book online option.”
While the city site isn’t set up to take bookings, they’ve instead collected links to do so and situated them in a one-stop-shopping section that will allow tourists to quickly reserve rooms, tours and rentals.
Paul Pepe, the city’s tourism manager, said the upgrade, which went live this week, was a long-time coming and long overdue.
He added the goal was to offer a fully responsive tool that also worked well with mobile, for visitors to find what they’re looking for when traveling to or thinking about traveling to Thunder Bay.
And it’s not just for those from away.
“We want residents to use the site as well, to be better ambassadors, to reconnect with our city and all the great things we have to see and do around the community, and to share it with their friends and family, to encourage their friends and family to come and visit this summer and see all what Thunder Bay has to offer.”
Karen Lewis, the city’s director of corporate strategic services, said the remainder of the website updates will roll out in June.
It’s been 10 years since the website was overhauled, the only time it’s been done since it was initially launched in 1996.
Times have changed, Lewis said.
“About half of the visitors who come to our website, about 5,000 a day, are coming to the site from mobile devices. We needed to have a responsive website so that it would adjust to the size of the phone and people could see the information properly,” she said.
“That’s just part of it. Through the city’s strategic plan there was a commitment to more engagement with the public, so this website renewal is also a part of creating a website … that is easier to navigate and provides quick access to the information that residents want about their city.”
