The City of Merritt has acquired the domain tourismmerritt.com from Tourism Nicola Valley in an effort to take advantage of a credible name.
“For one that website already existed, and it’s advertised on billboards as you enter town,” said Chief administrative officer Shawn Boven.
This type of domain name is conventional for city operated tourism sites to have, said Boven, noting tourismkamloops.com as an example.
“Tourism is an important part of economic development for a city and we recognize that,” he said.
Boven said he has the economic development manager devoting about 40 per cent of his time to tourism initiatives.
“We wanted to take [the website] and make it better,” he said.
Boven told the Herald no money changed hands in taking possession of the new website and the city is looking at new templates for the site.
“That is a prime website name,” Boven said at a tourism and economic development committee meeting held last week.
Economic development manager Will George said he plans to make many changes to the website, and anticipates it will take until next summer to get the website up-to-date.
The current website is dated as much of it’s content contains information from 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Having this city-run website will create a one-stop shop for tourism information, Boven told the Herald.
