Economic development officer Jason Young said he’s optimistic that 2012 will be a good year for tourism numbers in Deer Lake from what he’s seeing from the newly utilized Google Analytics.
Analytics helps measure traffic to any given website and helps determine which pages visitors are looking at. Young’s research shows that approximately 88 per cent of visitors so far are from Canada, which he said also shows that there is international attention to the area.
“We’re also seeing a lot of mobile users, which means that some time soon we will have to look at how to better accommodate mobile users,” he said. “The pages they are mostly looking at are the home page, followed by the about page.”
Young said visitors are also looking at the pages that include information on recreation and festivals and accommodations. Although they’ve only been tracking the numbers for two months, he’s optimistic about what he has seen so far.
“Tourism numbers will be up, the airport numbers are up and we’ll see if we can take advantage of those numbers,” he said. “People passing through here are either going to Gros Morne or heading east, so if we can get a portion of them to stop in, along with traffic from the airport, it should be an easy sell.”
Coun. Jean Young said the area has a number of tourists from within the province as well as outside.
“A good percentage of people coming in don’t have bowling alleys and swimming pools, so for them that’s a novelty,” she said. “We’re trying to market this as a family-friendly place to visit, where you can go bowling and walk down to the beach afterward.”
The economic development officer said next year they’ll be able to use their Internet research to a fuller extent because they’ll have a full year of figures on which to draw information.
