Bring your gear, wallets to show Kelowna love
If you have any kind of clothing with the words Kelowna or Okanagan on it, this Saturday is the day to wear it.
This week is Tourism Week, the date chosen long before COVID-19 entered the lexicon.
With non-essential travel discouraged as a way of forestalling the spread of the coronavirus, and holiday-making likely to look very different for awhile to come, the Tourism Kelowna agency has to come up with new ways of boosting local businesses that rely on spending by visitors.
The agency, funded in large part from a tax on hotel rooms, has proclaimed May 30 as Show Your Love for Kelowna Day.
"Residents are encouraged to support local businesses, show appreciation to those that work in the industry, share content about their favourite places and spaces on social media by tagging #exploreKelownalocal, and proudly show off their Kelowna and Okanagan apparel," states a press release from Tourism Kelowna.
If you don't own clothes with those words, you can alway buy some at Tourism Kelowna's online store, loveforkelowna.com.
Until May 30, $4 from each purchase made on the site will be directed to the B.C. Hospitality Foundation to help tourism and hospitality workers.
Tourism Kelowna's information centre on the downtown waterfront is to re-open next Monday.
Last year, there were 1.8 million overnight visitors to Kelowna. About 12,000 jobs in the Central Okanagan depend on tourism, Tourism Kelowna says, with visitors spending $337 million annually in the local economy.