Tourism Prince George moved to a container at Canada Games Plaza in the heart of downtown earlier this year and has got some new swag to show off at their Basecamp Boutique.
There are beer glasses, a snapback hat featuring a retro Mr. PG, Mr. PG air fresheners, and a new stuffed toy bear designed by an Indigenous artist. There are even some new shirts on the rack.
Tourism Prince George will be moving into their permanent home located between the Civic Centre and the Prince George Public Library, but that won’t be until later this year.
So for now the are in a heavy-metal container.
“We’re trying some different things,” Colin Carson, Tourism PG CEO, said. “We’ve got some great local partnerships with organizations like Exploration Place that make the Mr. PG stuffies and AiMHi who make the wooden Mr. PGs and we found some great other vendors as well. We’re just trying to see what people like and trying to adapt.”
Tourism Prince George looked at a lot of different options when it came to considering a new location for the Visitor Centre that was located on First Avenue for many years.
“The biggest challenge on First Avenue was that it was somewhat convenient for vehicle traffic but only if you were coming from the East and the location is not ideal for the rest of the vehicle traffic coming into town,” Carson said. “We were not really convenient for foot traffic. The strategy we really undertook was to see what we really should be focusing on – vehicle or foot traffic – and then find the best location. That led us to doing a lot of research, looking at the trends and really understanding the visitor centres that are still being utilized, especially in BC, focus on that foot traffic.”
Once they decided to focus on foot traffic, the next step was researching the best locations.
“With the civic and conference centre right here and about 850 hotel rooms within walking distance, the Two Rivers Gallery, and Connaught Hill in the summertime and the beautiful new Canfor Leisure Pool, the conference centre is probably our biggest tourism driver we have,” Carson said. “So a lot of factors. It ticked a lot of boxes. I think it’s going to be a little bit of a change in terms of visitors in RVs and stuff to find us. We are working with the province to get the signs changed and that will direct people to this location where there’s a large parking lot.”
There has been a lot of positive feedback on the new location, he added.
This new location is part of a bigger project that was announced this spring that will see Canada Games Plaza hosting an open-air container market and year-round skating rink with seating.
With that in place in later this year it will attract more visitors to the space.
“It will also attract local residents as we see on Foodie Fridays,” Carlson said. “This space just becomes a great location for people to hang out, whether that’s locals or visitors and we’re committed to making that even more so.”
For more information visit tourismpg.com/
