A new tourism site for the community will be launched in spring as the Summerland Chamber works to separate its tourism information from the rest of its online information.
At present, the Summerland Chamber’s site at summerlandchamber.com has information for residents and businesses, chamber board news and information for tourists.
Chamber manager Christine Petkau said the Tourism Summerland site will have all information for visitors on a single dedicated site.
“It’s like a Visitors’ Guide on steroids,” she said.
The Summerland Visitors’ Guide is published each year and distributed to tourism centres around the province and beyond. It is also posted online.
At present, the chamber’s tourism information is on the same site as the rest of its information. This means those looking for tourism information are also receiving the information about Summerland Chamber board meetings and information for local businesses.
Work on the standalone site began earlier this year and is part of the chamber’s various tourism initiatives.
In addition to the site and the Visitors’ Guide, the chamber is also working on partnership opportunities with other communities in the region.
For the second year in a row, the chamber will work with Penticton and Okanagan Falls in tourism promotion work.
In 2013, Summerland and other South Okanagan communities joined forces in the You Are Here tourism marketing campaign.
“It just makes sense to pool some of our resources for joint marketing. We will be building on this campaign in 2014 and we are already making plans for 2015 as well,” Petkau said.
In addition to the tourism site, the chamber board will look at other goals for the coming year.
“The chamber board is examining our priorities and the special projects that we will take on in 2014 and these will be presented to our members in the new year. In addition, we will continue to responsively serve our business members as well as work with a variety of partners to achieve our goals in tourism and business retention and attraction,” said chamber president Arlene Fenrich.
