How do you welcome tourists to our City?

Last week Kathy and I attended a meeting at Lloydminster Economic Development Corporation. They hosted a noon hour luncheon with speaker Jim Marshel from Travel Alberta. Jim oulined some of the changes to the Destination Marketing Regions and provided some thought provoking ideas for marketing our City and region. The Chamber's involvement with Travel Alberta goes back 12 years when we began managing the Travel Alberta Visitor Information Centre under a contract with Alberta Tourism. The goal was at that time and still is to inform tourists about the City and our region while at the same time marketing Alberta. We have had a couple of "secret shops" at our VIC and the feedback has been excellent. We are very proud of our staff at the VIC and the excellent job they do serving our visitors.

This next week we will have an opportunity to serve tourists in a big way as we welcome the drivers, families and fans of the CPCA. The Chamber will be getting into the spirit of the "chucks" by decorating our office. We encourage our members to also decorate by painting your windows, decorating the interior  of your business, or just dressing up western style for the week. The Lloyd Ex has some great events happening to add to the excitement so be sure to check out their website.

Be sure to check us out on Twitter. We have been tweeting for the last few days and we have a new facebook page as well. We hope that this will help us to reach more businesses in our community. Be sure to watch for special events and networking opportunities.

The City has been busy looking after some of the areas that our members tell us are issues or concerns. Highway 17 south has been receiving some upgrades and highway 16 west of 52 Ave. has also been recieving some repairs. Although this may be annoying, it is necessary for all of us to be patient, as the window of opportunity to get this work done is short and all the rain this year has made finishing up on projects like these difficult.

Streetscapes is pleased to see the new sidewalks depicting our border downtown being finished. Some of us may be indifferent to our border, but folks from out of town get quite excited to walk down the border and have a foot in two provinces at one time. It is one of our biggest tourist attractions and we need to promote it as much as we can.

Hope everyone is having a safe and relaxing summer.

Till next time ....
Pat