Rural Community in south-western Ontario, population 50,000
 Elgin County’s new tourism website sets a new standard for destination marketing and municipal tourism attraction online. Launched in May 2010, www.elgintourist.com offers:
- One combined information source for both tourists and tourism operators;
- One management system for tourism and business listings;
- One integrated branding initiative that reflects the themes, colours and images of Elgin County’s award-winning economic development brand.
For Elgin County, a bucolic agricultural community surrounding the City of St. Thomas in southwest Ontario, the new tourism website has met and exceeded the goals of its Economic Development and Tourism Department.
The site is extremely helpful both to tourists and tourism business owners. Tourists can create customized itineraries from directory listings and events, making it easy to plan an exciting Elgin experience. Google maps are created on the fly, mapping out the accommodations and attractions the tourist plans to visit.
Easy-to-use features include a business directory, events calendar and special sections devoted to culinary tourism, water-based activities, agri-tourism and the historic attractions of St. Thomas as the Railway Capital of Canada.
Perhaps the best feature of the new business directory is that tourism events and business information can be entirely self-managed by the tourism owner/operators themselves. They simply log in to the website as members of the regional tourism association and submit their business details. Even non-members can take advantage of the system by simply requesting an account. This saves significant overhead time on the part of County tourism staff while making information that was previously unavailable online easily accessible.
Other enhanced features include the addition of an integrated attractions listing service that enables tourism business operators to not only manage their business listings but also promote events within the community. Business and related event listings are now completely integrated into the website through multiple access points.
“We were looking to create a powerful, effective website that would benefit tourism operators, County staff, and of course serve and attract tourists. Yfactor worked closely with us to develop the new tourism website which meets these goals and exceeds them. The directory and event tools help us simplify administration and make it easy to generate revenue. The itinerary tool is particularly innovative – we look forward to seeing more tourists in Elgin County because of it!”
-Alan Smith, Director of Economic Development and Tourism
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