Call to Action - Agreement Between Tourist Town and Bruce County

Let's be transparent and keep distance from shady agreements. It does not advance the interests of local businesses. Seems like Tourist Town is using this as a platform to promote itself.

It's such a shame to see the previous foundation get dismantled and thrown away. The old explorethebruce website provided great evergreen content and exposure for all businesses in the county and could have continued to do so. The new website is woefully inadequate, even if the listings were free! There isn't even an obvious way of knowing where any of the businesses or communities are unless you click on each individual one - how painful! I feel for both the tourists and the business owners.

This company has leveraged the county exposure to the web to develop a poor and incomplete site.

Shameful.

The current direction Explore the Bruce has taken with utilizing Tourist Town as it's information and business/tourist promotion portal is a big step down and away from the quality and values that existed previously. The current Tourist Town site lacks significantly in information, quality and engagement likely in part due to the new pay for privilege nature of the business model. Tourists and tourism are neither well served or fairly informed by these new changes and I support this petition to affect changes as requested by it.

Based on the article written in the Walkerton Herald-Times I have some concerns with the changes to the Explore the Bruce website.

Bruce County Tourism once represented the little guy. Their map was the best seen in Ontario in over twenty years. They worked one on one with small business to promote them in a unified manner. Adventure Bruce was an awesome mascot and encouraged kids to get involved in their local communities. All that is going away thanks to greed and power. It is a sad state of affairs when Bruce County takes a great thing and corrupts it for profit.

So many amazing hands helped create this and so few to destroy it. I jumped ship long ago and haven't advocated or participated in 4+ years. Sad, but maybe you should have listened to locals to begin with!

I was alarmed to read about this deal in the Walkerton news, as it seems completely inappropriate and even wasteful. The deeper I looked, the uglier it became. A new directory is a terrible solution for destination discovery and local listings management. I say this as an experienced big-ticket tourism marketer, and as a service provider for one of North America's best local listings software solutions. It's almost unbelievable that in 2017, Bruce County has bought into a directory, but what's worse is that it's been set up as a cash cow for a private company and those profits are being generated by what should be a free service provided by the County. I don't know how this got by council, but if reality is as bad as the optics, it should be reevaluated pronto.

I worked for Bruce County Tourism for almost 4 years creating the traffic to the main website and creating and managing their social accounts from zero to hundreds of thousands they are now. I have of myself during work hours and after hours to create the content and exposure the ExploretheBruce brand receives today. My efforts were for the business owners of the county so they did not have to pay $ but my County salary did for them. I loved what I did and went the extra mile for them as many who know me, knew I worked 24/7 as social media content creator. It is sad to see what has been done as a not for profit to the business owners of Bruce County. Sad to see capatilistic angles being played on tax paying citizens. Guess this explains why so many businesses are reaching out for help for business exposure to my company www.gemwebb.com Good luck Bruce County, I tried. Gem Webb

It's a slippery slope, these decisions affect our lively hood and should not be allowed to move in this direction without consultation with stakeholders.

You do realize that previous to the partnership with Tourist Town - all businesses were free on explorethebruce.com. It is owned and managed by Bruce County. From what I understand they have 2 IT persons working at the county - part of their job was to manage the explorethebruce.com site. Now they outsourced their website and we have to pay to have our businesses listed (to a private company) with a web link, photos etc , as well as the county paying $1500/ month to have the explorethebruce.com website managed. Our tax $$ hard at work! Your comments above show that to be usefully listed on explorethebruce.com you have to pay Tourist Town.

I am not unhappy Tourist Town. Since they were promoting Lion's Head I signed on with them a year ago. However I didn't see the results that I was looking for, therefore I asked to be removed and received the following response: "I can do this for you. I just want to make sure that you know that we have partnered with Bruce County Tourism and will be launching the new explorethebruce.com shortly. Only enhanced listings on Tourist Town will be eligible to show on the explorethebruce.com site which receives over a million hits per year. I wanted you to know this in case it wasn't factored in your decision. Your enhanced listing, which now shows on VisitLionsHead.ca and VisitBrucePeninsula.ca would also show on explorethebruce.com for $20/month."

FYI The County are contacting people on this Petition directly. Perhaps they can answer to the allegations directly?

Very disappointed with Bruce County. Before, all we had to do provide our info and they would add our free listing. Now, the site doesn't even list the previous businesses. Sadly, you have to pay or be considered to be the "best of" elite. So much for promoting new and upstart businesses.

I encourage a full review of the contracts and actions to rectify the situation as stated in this petition.

as a business who has often been a sponsor of Explore the Bruce I was shocked to see that we are no longer on the website at all! & as a BIA board member I am shocked to see how little of Southampton as a whole is listed on the website!

It should have gone to tender. The business model seems antiquated and will likely fail over time. Most travel research is done via web and excluding phone numbers, addresses and website links will only irritate visitors and they will move on and/ or start looking for another destination.

Fair is fair.

I think Tourist Town is an excellent platform for small towns that otherwise may not be able to afford a website for destination marketing. However, I take issue with this not going to tender, as well as the fact that businesses must pay to have any decent representation. As a government service a listing should be free.