Book & Look

Project Overview
Bruce County’s Economic Development team conceived “Book & Look” campaign to support sustainable tourism by controlling the volume of visitors to one area at a time on the Bruce Peninsula (Bruce Peninsula National Park, The Grotto, Lion’s Head Lookout, etc.).

The campaign encourages pre-booked parking before visiting the Bruce Peninsula to control visitor traffic, while encouraging visiting lakeshore and interior Bruce County communities when the Peninsula is fully booked. These communities were ready to welcome tourists, specifically the Lakeshore communities of Sauble Beach, Southampton, Port Elgin, and Kincardine and the interior communities of Paisley, Walkerton, Mildmay, Chesley, and Huron-Kinloss.

This would alleviate pressure on the Peninsula region with the added benefit of boosting spending and tourism in the interior communities.

Challenges & Changes
Local partners in the region had noted that the high volume of visitors was leading to overcrowding, overuse, and strain on the environment and economic resources, local water and sewage systems, landfills, and instances where visitors would stray off paths to disturb local flora and fauna.

These issues were compounded by travelers from Southwestern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area being limited to visiting in-province areas due to travel restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As Ontario gradually started reopening and travel became more common, local travel, and domestic, in-province travel was still preferred by travelers and tourists.

Target Audience
Young couples, singles, families, and retirees who are residents of Bruce, Grey, Simcoe, the Greater Toronto Area, and Southwestern Ontario, ages 20-65+. Family vacationers, outdoor enthusiasts who are active with hiking, paddling, cycling, and beaching. This demographic also shows an interest in travel.

Related Materials
Campaign Landing Page: https://explorethebruce.com/trip-planning-resources/peninsula-book-ahead%ef%bf%bc/

Campaign Analytics & Effectiveness
Bruce County – Book & Look Campaign (Phase 1 & 2)
Phase 1 of the campaign ran on two platforms, Facebook & Google, with placements on Google in Search and Discovery. The overall focus of Phase 1 of the campaign was to get an earlier start on The Grotto booking season beginning in April 2022, encouraging people located in key BruceGreySimcoe, GTA & Southern Ontario markets to book before they look when visiting The Grotto in Tobermory this summer. Phase 2 of the campaign has the same primary goal as Phase 1 of the campaign by means of clickouts, however, we have a secondary goal of encouraging people to explore the other inland summer activities that Bruce County has to offer. We’ve extended the reach for Phase 2 of the campaign by including a Performance Max placement on Google and a Display placement on Yahoo’s network. As of yesterday (Thursday August 11th), the Book and Look campaign has shown very strong performance with 12,241 clickouts to the Parks Canada website, 2M total impressions, 47k clicks, an impressive CTR of 2.34% on $21,292.04 in media for an efficient CPA of $1.74.