Brewer’s Row and beyond will get a business boost with Port Moody’s continued participation and funding contribution to the BC Ale Trail campaign.
The city jumped in with a $9,000 contribution last year — the four local breweries chipped in $1,000 — which bought a slick profile, photography and video on the BC Ale Trail website, as well as some initial marketing efforts.
PoMo’s Ale Trail Tour page was the top-billed page on the Ale Trail’s site and the Brewer’s Row blog post had the most social media engagement of the campaign.
This year, the push will be to ramp up those ad campaigns with an increased presence on social media, blog and digital platforms, and to bring on new participants to take advantage of a full tourist season, according to a city staff report.
“We did this last year and it worked out well,” Mayor Mike Clay said at Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting. “I think with the community down in Brewer’s Row, and bringing in other businesses, this is really an improvement.”
Coun. Diana Dilworth added the advertising campaign provides an opportunity to highlight other businesses in the area and connect visitors from Moody Centre to Newport Village.
“We can leverage this for a higher degree of promotion for all our businesses,” she said.
Port Moody will contribute $5,000 to the 2017 campaign and the breweries will add $2,500. Destination BC matches contributions from the members, bringing this year’s total budget for the campaign to just over $400,000.
Organizers anticipate revenue models will be in place by 2018 to make the initiative self-sustaining.
