A lot more people took a look at Lambton County this summer and it may be because of a name change.
For years, Lambton County has been marketed under the name Tourism Sarnia Lambton – the same name as the county’s tourism body.
In 2016, TSL hired a social media and website coordinator. Then in June, TSL rebranded its social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to Ontario’s Bluecoast.
The group posted a video which had been produced the year before on the newly-branded site and people looking for a summer vacation spot watched. That video alone reached 298,000 viewers.
Kyle Morrison, TSL’s social media and website coordinator, says while the organization had not changed, they wanted to brand the area hitting some of the things research shows vacationers are looking for.
“The overall goal is to position our region as best in class for waterfront and also focusing on our beer and wine culinary experience ….those are key demands,” he says. “The response has been very positive, especially from outside travel media. This tends to appeal more to consumers were trying to reach.”
There are no hard statistics yet whether the campaign drew more people to Lambton County, but Morrison say social media interest has jumped.
Last August, TSL’s Facebook page, for example, had about 2,200 likes. Today, there are over 6,300. It’s Twitter following is now over 2,000 and there are 1,120 Instagram followers.
He adds the hope is to attract people through social media and then draw them to other aspects of the county’s tourism industry including places such as Victoria Playhouse Petrolia.
“The waterfront might attract them here, but we’re encouraging them to spend more time with the complementary activities, those being the arts and culture and museums,” he says adding statistic show that while tourist spend four to six hours for the main attraction, they spend between eight and 10 hours visiting other places in the area.
Morrison says TSL will be examining how the social media campaign affected this year’s tourism numbers as they come in.
“We’re monitoring the traffic and seeing if there is an increase. We’ll reevaluate and see how it has worked for us so far and then see where there is room for improvement.”