The General Manager of the Saugeen Shores and District Chamber of Commerce says their tourist arm wants its cake and to eat it too.
Joanne Robbins says they’re currently reviewing plans to update and refresh their web site in the hopes of attracting more interest from tourists.
Robbins says part of their plan is to join up with Bruce County, who themselves, have a new website through Explore the Bruce.
Robbins says locally they can’t afford an IT department, whereas the county has one with several IT professionals and they’re willing to donate time to the local tourist website.
She says the same offer will be made to the other municipalities in the county but Saugeen Shores is sort of the pilot project for now.
With that in place, Robbins says they’ll also be working on their own local site taking a hybrid approach to the options available to them.
She says it can be seen as a partnership between Saugeen Shores, Tourism, the Chamber and private enterprise, along with the county in further promoting tourism for the area.
The local website is expected to be more user-friendly and interactive and allow tourist officials to garner more detailed information from its visitors.
Robbins says they hope to have both sites up and running in time for the tourism season next year.
Bruce County Warden Mike Smith says the county IT department has several full time employees and there should be no problem sharing the resources with Saugeen Shores to start with.
