Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Equipped with some fancy gizmos and gadgets, Destination Ontario recently paid a visit to some of Lennox and Addington County’s hottest tourist attractions.
Their goal was to capture photos and video that will be compiled in the coming weeks to help promote the area, far and wide.
“We’re partnering with RTO 9, the regional tourism for the area,” said Darlene Paguandas, creative services manager with Destination Ontario. “We’re capturing photo, video, drone to just let people know what’s new and great in the area and what attractions there are and all the great reasons to come visit the region.”
Along with videographer Andy Huckle and photographer Peter Lusztyk, the crew visited Amherst Island’s Topsy Farms, Bath’s MacKinnon Brothers, Odessa’s Babcock Mill, Ellena’s in downtown Napanee, took a Napanee River Tour from The Waterfront and observed the stars at the Dark Sky Viewing Area. At each stop they had an up close look at what makes it so special, whether it was playing with sheep or an aerial view of the Napanee River through remote controlled drone.
“With Destination Ontario we share our images with all our partners who might want to promote this area,” said Paguandas. “Those could be international partners, local partners and of course RTO 9 and their partners will be sharing it throughout the summer on their social channels and websites and all the business that we met with will have access to use it for their own business pages and websites as well.”
Their reach spans both local and global.
“We could be marketing to folks from Quebec, to Ontario to other provinces in Canada, the U.S. but also people that travel from Europe, Asia from all over the world,” said said. “People take a lot of great road trips to this region so we’ve trying to focus on good road trip ideas.”
Serving as their tour guide was Rob Plumley, economic development officer with Lennox and Addington County.
“We’re very excited that South Eastern Ontario (RTO9) arranged for Destination Ontario to highlight some of the fantastic tourist destinations we have here in Lennox & Addington,” said Plumley. “Destination Ontario has a very strong and engaged social media following and the footage they acquired during their visit will attract tourists to L&A that are interested in exploring local culture, attractions, and unique experiences. Amplifying our tourism opportunities through their channels can boost visitation to our communities, bringing along economic benefits for our local businesses. Naturally L&A was very happy to help show them around our communities.”