Ontario, Canada | Monday, Oct 19th, 2020 - With tourism spending having dropped by two-thirds (-66.3%) in the second quarter[1], Canadian visitor economy faces several new challenges. Despite this gloomy outlook, some Canadian cities continue to thrive with the help of their innovative destination marketing organizations - allowing them to re-imagine the future of tourism.
One such innovator is Tourism North Bay. The official destination marketing organization of North Bay, and Driftscape, a Canada based travel app, are launching their partnership this Monday, October 19th, 2020. To quote Steve Dreany, Executive Director, Tourism North Bay:
“Tourism North Bay is pleased to partner with Driftscape to enhance our website planning capability with curated routes and itineraries. This brings to our visitors the very best offerings to ensure an enjoyable experience while exploring our open spaces.”
This partnership is a result of North Bay's focus on encouraging its residents to shop local with regional projects. The team wanted to "go digital" and had talked about developing their own app for a while. Unfortunately, the costs and time involved made it seem impossible, or so it was until they came across the Driftscape app (available on Android & iOS for free) - a budget friendly way to have their own app minus the need to build or maintain the technical aspects of it!
By mapping tours, hiking trails, local businesses, landmarks, and other fun activities on the Driftscapes app, North Bay has ensured that it continues to be the “Gateway” to northern adventures through these unprecedented times. What’s more: the Driftscape app adds an extra edge to their visitor experience with the help of its Augmented Reality mode (available only to iOS users).
This innovative step towards creating virtual access to North Bay for its locals and visitors, is set to break COVID-19 tourism barriers and transform the way their visitors explore. It also allows North Bay to expand its geographic reach far and wide, helping them get a competitive edge over neighbouring cities, while attracting new explorers to their picturesque destination.
While October 19th marks the start of this unique partnership, Tourism North Bay boasts of an extensive plan designed to achieve a game changing approach to tourism.
Addressing the concern of COVID-19 safety practices, Steve adds that North Bay has implemented all the prescribed COVID-19 protective measures to ensure the safety of their visitors and locals alike.
To begin exploring the gateway to northern adventures, click here: https://driftscape.app.link/north-bay
About Tourism North Bay:
Tourism North Bay is the official destination marketing organization for North Bay’s tourism industry. Tourism North Bay focuses on promoting and selling the region as a must-see destination for tourists, sports tournaments, convention delegates and business travellers. This initiative and other programs of Tourism North Bay are funded by The Corporation of the City of North Bay’s Municipal Accommodation Tax and delivered by Tourism North Bay.
For more information, please visit https://www.tourismnorthbay.com/
About Driftscape:
Driftscape, a Canada based augmented reality travel app, provides a platform for local arts, culture, and history organizations to share their stories in an interactive and engaging fashion to a growing base of active users. For users, the app is a personal guide that helps them explore their surroundings from the point of view of diverse locals’ experts. The app also helps users discover places of interest, events, and tours from a growing list of content partners. Available on iOS and Android devices, Driftscape is an ad-free platform dedicated to making local culture easier to discover. There are currently over 45 organizations using the app to share their stories and over 4000 points of interest, events, and tours across Canada.
For more visit http://www.driftscape.com or Facebook - @DriftscapeApp | Twitter - @DriftscapeApp | Instagram - @driftscapeapp.
[1] Statistics Canada. 2020-09-30. National tourism indicators, second quarter 2020. Retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/200930/dq200930b-eng.htm?indid=3389-1&indgeo=0