Two years after people and places were locked down, things in the Bay of Quinte, and more specifically Belleville are trending upwards when it comes to tourism.
Bay of Quinte Regional Marketing Board Executive Director Dug Stevenson presented the good news to Belleville council on Tuesday afternoon.
He said this region last summer showed two per cent growth in tourism over the summer of 2019.
“We are in the top 15 in occupancy in the country,” Stevenson said. “That’s higher than the Kingston average.”
He said the Regional Marketing Board is looking more into experiential tourism development and developing ten experiences over the next two years as people want to visit places to do things and experience things.
He said the Board is also printing the Bay of Quinte map as it has been frequently requested and over 50,000 copies should be available by the middle of June.
Mayor Mitch Panciuk thanked Stevenson for the $100,000 in grants provided to 56 businesses during the pandemic, noting it may not have seemed like much, but it meant the world and helped many of them survive.
