The Cochrane Tourism Association is in full swing for summer, offering visitors a full menu of activities and options with their Still Hungry For Adventure campaign.
And the project seems to be off to a strong start, with the association’s website logging some major traffic since the end of June.
According to Hillary Richardson, the group’s coordinator, more than 1,000 unique visitors have checked out the website each week for the past two weeks. That’s a big step up from the usual figures, which Richardson said are typically around the 500 mark.
“We’re on to something with Still Hungry for Adventure — we’re broadening our appeal,” said John Thomson, president of the tourism association. “Largely, Cochrane is thought of as an ice cream place, which we are. But there are more activities here than just dining and shopping.”
With such close proximity to the foothills, Cochrane’s surrounding area presents a plethora of adventures for both day-trippers and weekend warriors. Between fly fishing trips, exploring the countryside on horseback and travelling down the river in a raft — among many other fun activities — the list of Cochrane-area adventures is enough to stir up an appetite.
And the group at Cochrane Tourism has been working hard to satisfy those hunger cravings. Richardson has been slaving away on marketing campaigns, putting Cochrane’s name on the map in publications as far away as Saskatchewan and as locally as Airdrie and Kananaskis County.
“I think Cochrane has a large number of businesses that thrive on non-local traffic,” said Thomson, who was the group’s founding president in 2008. “People tend to forget about tourism as an industry. The work our group does tends to go unnoticed locally; much of our time is spent marketing Cochrane outside of our local reach.”
To learn more about the Cochrane Tourism Association, or to see a list of events in the area, visit cochrane-tourism.ca.
