ROBINET: Their loss could be our gain, if… |
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ROBINET: Their loss could be our gain, if…
I was just reading that according to Forbes, the U.S. lost $4.5 billion last year in tourism revenue thanks to a drop in Canadian travellers.
And, that’s just money lost from Canadian travellers, not people from other parts of the world who have decided they’re no longer visiting that destination.
ROBINET: Their loss could be our gain, if… Back to video
That news came on the heels of the other big news that the American president has announced he will block the opening of the almost-ready-to-open Gordie Howe bridge between Windsor and Detroit on behalf of his billionaire donor who owns the existing privately owned Ambassador Bridge.
In the meantime, however, a Windsor city councillor is suggesting that travellers to the U.S. take the tunnel instead of the bridge.
And, if I was travelling to the U.S., that’s exactly what I would be doing.
Not only is it cheaper at $8.25 per trip via the tunnel, compared to $14 on the bridge, but since the City of Windsor owns half the tunnel and receives a portion of the tolls, it’s money in the bank for the city.
Windsor Coun. Angelo Marignani told the CBC that while he’s not encouraging a full-on boycott of the bridge, “I am just voicing the concerns that my residents have brought up on how we can support our city and support our country.”
Nothing wrong there!
And, as much as I feel badly for the everyday Americans who are being hurt by so many of the policies, threats, tariffs and overall chaos in that country, I couldn’t help but think about the opportunities we have in Chatham-Kent to try and capture a chunk of that money.
We have so much to offer here, but if you ask me, there’s a lot more we could be doing to promote ourselves.
It’s been a while since I looked into our tourism website, so today I decided to take a quick peek to see what potential visitors see when they Google us.
I landed on the municipality’s VisitCK page and was dismayed to discover that still – in the year 2026 – the many bounties that make up Chatham-Kent are still promoted in lists of lists, so rather than throwing everything we have at potential visitors, we leave them to sift through our offerings and hope they’re willing to put in the effort.
For example, I clicked on the Eat & Stay page, where a dropdown box offered me six categories: Bakery Trail, Corks & Kegs, Ice Cream Trail, Patios, Places to Eat and Places to Stay.
Now, call me crazy, but the first thing I expect to see if I click on a page promoting a Bakery Trail or an Ice Cream Trail, is a fun and colourful, not-to-scale little map showing each of the spots and if we really wanted to step it up, a little user guide to the effect of: Start your day in WHEREVER for breakfast, and then enjoy a couple of hours enjoying the water/trails/museums before heading to WHEREVER for lunch. After that, enjoy a few more hours of hiking/swimming/fishing/shopping before heading to WHEREVER for dinner.
I think you get the picture.
Instead, what we’re confronted with is a list of places in Chatham-Kent which people can click on to find out what’s available there.
There is a map, but it’s the Google map with pins to the locations included, so as you can imagine, not very exciting. There are also some colourful bakery photos on the page, but no way of knowing if they’re local or just stock photos.
Meanwhile, over on the Plan Your Trip page, I clicked on Brochures, and found five brochures that I could download: Barn Quilts, Black History, Classic Cars, Fishing and Tecumseh Parkway.
And, while that’s better than nothing, I was left baffled as to why there isn’t an overarching one that encompasses everything.
Even more baffling, when I clicked on the Communities page on the tourism site, I ended up over in LivingCK, which is a page featuring a photo of each community. When you click on a photo, you end up on another page full of links for various attractions, which is how I managed to click my way right out of the tourism site altogether.
Luckily, my dogged determination allowed me to reGoogle (if that’s a word!) back to the VisitCK site to look at some more lists of lists.
Without belabouring the point (and perhaps that ship has already sailed!), there is a lot more we could and should be doing to bring tourists and remind locals of all we have to offer.
In all likelihood we have a good few more years of people steering clear of the U.S. which means we have time to ramp up our efforts.
Our local tourism operators and businesses are doing their best to promote us, but there needs to be a concerted effort from the municipality to pull everything together.
This isn’t a new situation unfortunately, and I remember writing about this very issue way back in 2013 after what I consider to be a major failure in regards to the 200th commemoration of the Battle of the Thames.
But, it’s never too late to make a change, and in this day and age of technological wonder, it shouldn’t be that hard to put a more user-friendly and compelling tourism face forward.
Stay well my friends.
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