(Montreal) The total eclipse allowed the Eastern Townships to “shine on the international scene”, according to the regional tourist association which estimates that tens of thousands of people traveled to the region in the last days.
The director of Eastern Townships Tourism estimates that the region welcomed between “50,000 and 100,000 people easily” when the Moon hid the Sun on Monday.
“We will have the official figures on real traffic next Tuesday,” said Lysandre Michaud-Verreault, adding that the “occupancy rate in hotels was 99.9% throughout the Cantons-de-l ‘East “.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Mme Michaud-Verreault explained that his organization “was not taken by surprise and that it was well prepared” to receive this unusual quantity of visitors.
Eastern Townships Tourism had collected information, several months in advance, on the flow of tourists usually caused by total eclipses.
“Two years ago, we set up a regional multi-sectoral committee, with sectors such as public health, public security, the SQ and others, with a view to coordinating the flow of visitors” and “we had organized more than fifty sites across the Eastern Townships to receive visitors and be able to distribute them,” she explained.
“So we knew that we could accommodate between 60,000 and 80,000 people in these sites and that all the other non-designated sites were added to that. »
Media repercussions
The tourism association indicated that it had identified “more than 600 articles, mentions on radio or television” which cited “the Eastern Townships as an eclipse destination or an astrotourism destination”, in media across the country. and from abroad.
“We also had 65,000 visits to the eclipse pages of our websites,” so “that really allowed us to shine on the international scene,” added Lysandre Michaud-Verreault.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Eclipse in Mont-Mégantic
“For tourists, the fact of having experienced such an extraordinary event in the Eastern Townships is sure to leave an impression,” so “it suggests that they will want to come back to because of the positive feeling linked to their experience”, according to the director of the tourist association.
Mme Michaud-Verreault also believes that many people who have read or heard about the region because of the eclipse “will now consider it as a tourist destination.”
It is not because the region has benefited from a lot of media coverage that it will now try to save money by reducing the budgets of its advertising campaigns, on the contrary.
“It’s a good time to bring back other messages, about the outdoors or gourmet tourism for example,” so “we want to take advantage of the opportunity to remind people in the United States and Ontario” who have heard of the Eastern Townships in recent days.