The Pontiac Tourism Association (PTA) announced the upcoming launch of a new website at its annual general meeting Apr. 30 at Café Downtown in Fort Coulonge that it hopes will increase visibility for local businesses.
President Emma Judd said the new Explore Pontiac site, which should be launched by the end of the month, will feature ideas for road-trip experiences so that weekend visitors can easily find destinations that are close together.
“We’re such a vast region, it’s sometimes hard for tourists to conceptualize how far everything is in between and what regions are close to each other and what’s realistic,” she said.
The site formerly highlighted only businesses that were members of the association, but Judd said the organization hopes to eventually include more tourism businesses in the area.
She said board members are discussing the possibility of waiving the membership fee and instead asking municipalities to pay a sum of $100 so their businesses can become members and thus featured on the website.
“We’re really hoping that the municipalities are game to step up and help us, and it’s just because we do get most of our funding from grants and organizations and the government, so we want to be able to offer all of our membership benefits to more people,” she said, adding that they have contacted municipalities and are waiting on responses.
Judd said she hopes having more members will allow the organization to capitalize on $10,000 in free monthly advertising that Google offers to non-profits.
“We’re trying to take advantage of it, we got started a little bit last year and realized that our website just wasn’t up to par, so we hired somebody to help [ . . . ] then we’ll have different people manage it,” she said.
Former president of Pontiac Tourism and current board member Dennis Blaedow said he is excited for the change because the organization has been working toward a fuller and more informative website like this for years.
“It’s been the 100 per cent major stumbling block for us all along,” he said. “This newest stage, I honestly feel, is one of the best that we’ve had.”
Organization also planning Lake2Plate follow-up
In 2022 and 2023 the organization paid a combined $45,000 on a series of promotional YouTube videos with production company FIVE2NINE highlighting around a dozen tourist businesses focused on local fishing, food and beverages.
Judd, whose Shawville bed and breakfast Circa was featured in the series, said the organization felt it was successful and they are hoping to do a follow-up to the series this year.
“We’re hoping to do a continuation of the Lake2Plate marketing we did a few years back, which was a really successful video project we did that helped to bring that directly as an experience that tourists [ . . . ] can have,” said Judd.
“Anybody can have the lake-to-plate experience – fresh fish and great cooking. And then we’re hoping to do more networking.”
Board member Denis LeBrun, whose outfitting business Domaine du Lac Bryson Lake Lodge was also featured in the Lake2Plate series, said the campaign gave him better visibility online and material to use in self-promotion.
“We got a lot of great photos and stuff we use on our websites and on our publicity items, so it was really nice. Good quality video and there’s a little short we got out of it, so it was a real good advantage,” he said.
LeBrun said he is hopeful the new expanded Explore Pontiac website will help visitors find and spend money at all kinds of Pontiac businesses they might need while they are visiting.
“We have fishing and hunting lodges [in the Pontiac] but all of our guests are coming through the area and they’re stopping to buy gas, groceries, they might even spend the night at a local hotel on their way up [ . . . ] so it does increase the tourism for them to be involved in part of these websites,” he said.
Judd said board members for the upcoming year will be announced once the group has a chance to have a board meeting in the coming weeks.
