Heather Gropp, community development officer of SNNF explains, “this workshop was designed to provide our local businesses with information and research we have done within the municipality in regards to visitors in our community and where our visitors are coming from.”
Partnering with the Northwest Business Centre in Kenora, SNNF businesses will be able to take see how digital marketing can benefit them.
“The Northwest Business Centre is one of our amazing regional partners that provide a lot of support to our business community. They offer really great workshops and opportunities to grow and expand and provide good guidance. They’re just a fantastic resource,” said Gropp.
Northwest Business Centre will Gropp present the data during the workshop and provide businesses with information on how to apply the numbers in their marketing.
Gropp explains that the data that they have collected and analyzed deals with the number of people who visited the municipality pre-pandemic and how the pandemic has changed the tourism landscape.
“In SNNF, we are a large tourism economy. Approximately 80 per cent of businesses are reliant on tourism,” said Gropp.
“In a marketing component, if we know that we had a shift in where people are coming from then a business can use that information to reach out to those new markets,” Gropp continues.
It was only recently that people can move freely between the Canadian and the United States border. Gropp acknowledges that the data shows that pre-pandemic a large number of visitors to SNNF were from down south.
“We have a very large component of American visitors. It will be interesting to understand how that has shifted over the course of the pandemic,” said Gropp
While the borders were closed, Gropp explains that market trends shifted during the pandemic to an influx of visitors from parts of northwestern Ontario and the east from Manitoba.
Gropp does acknowledge that since the border restrictions have been lifted this year American tourists are starting to return.
Gropp is encouraging interested businesses to register by emailing Heather Gropp at [email protected] so they can know how many people to expect; however, the event is open to the public.
The Digital Success in the Changing Marketplace Workshop with be held on Nov. 7 at the Nestor Falls Community Centre from 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. and at the Sioux Narrows Community Centre from 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m.
