Officials behind a new partnership between the City of Barrie, Barrie Tourism and Downtown Barrie BIA hope to expand tourism beyond the beach and into the city.
Dubbed “Ask Me,” the program offers a mobile visitor information service aimed at not only benefiting visitors to Barrie’s waterfront, but also downtown businesses.
“Barrie is a very popular destination and a popular destination for day-trippers to come up and go to the waterfront, but day-trippers don’t add a lot of economic impact to your city because they bring their own food, etc.,” explained Barrie Tourism executive director Kathleen Trainor.
“We (want) to move them off of the beach and off the waterfront and into the downtown to perhaps get a coffee or stay after and go to the patio — and some kind of tourism-related spend," she added. "We are trying to increase the economic impact of tourism.”
Trainor told BarrieToday the program, which launched last weekend, will see staff make their way around the lakeshore in a well-marked golf cart during key times of the day in the hopes of being able to connect with the most people.
“We have a bunch of visitor cards to hand out and postcards with a QR code. … Last Saturday and Sunday they handed out hundreds of visitor guides, which is what we want," she said.
“Supporting local businesses strengthens our local economy,” noted Craig Stevens, executive director of the Downtown Barrie BIA. “Downtown Barrie is full of one-of-a-kind businesses and award-winning restaurants that are ready to make each visit a memorable one.”
Staff will have lanyards with QR codes that visitors can scan with their phones and be taken to a website where they can discover all the reasons why they should explore downtown Barrie during their visit including event information as well as the My Barrie coupon pass.
“We are doing a lot of digital technology to drive tourism-related purchases,” Trainor said.
Another aspect of the program, she noted, is to help staff and visitors address some of the more frequently asked questions.
“We do get inundated with the exact same questions, so they ask us, they ask bylaw, lifeguards… so the second half of the program is to have the QR codes drive you to a website that will answer all the top questions we get,” Trainor said. “This way all you have to do is scan the QR code, and it drives you to a landing page where you can see all the rules for the beach… or any other question you may have.”
Although Trainor acknowledges the COVID-19 pandemic did result in some “over-tourism” — which is described as something that occurs when there are too many visitors to a particular destinations — she believes there's a fine line in understanding how important tourism is the a city such as Barrie.
“Tourists do come and bring money into your community and have millions of dollars in terms of economic impact. That’s what this program is really about — to get the day-trippers to spend more money and to increase the ‘visitor economy’,” she said, pointing out that the economic impact of tourism for the city is estimated to be around $100 million."
Pre-COVID, she said 430,000 people would stay in Barrie hotels and the financial impact was around $56 million.
"Tourism is an economic driver for Barrie and it does bring in millions and millions of dollars," Trainor said.
The Ask Me program is slated to continue throughout July and August. For more information, click here.
