Ontario’s Highlands Tourism

TNB built a beautiful consumer website that serves as the entry point and primary source of discovery and information for tourists and communicated their refreshed brand with a focus on local-first, sustainable tourism.

A Gateway to Local Discovery: The New Consumer Website

The new consumer website developed by TNB serves as the central hub for tourists to discover, plan, and immerse themselves in the experience of Ontario's Highlands. As more than 70% of visitors to comewander.ca use phones or tablets, the new site was designed for mobile-first.

Additionally, the site utilizes video to showcase the natural beauty of the area.

To aid travellers in planning their trips, the site includes as much business information as possible. While outbound links to tourism operators were considered a metric of success, many operators in the region did not have sophisticated websites. As a result, comewander.ca was built to provide visitors with robust information to help them plan their trips in advance.

Clear Content Architecture

Like Tofino’s website, OHTO had a large amount of content and information that needed to be made available to audiences. TNB conducted a content audit and created brand new pathways for visitors to discover the information they were looking for on the website. Those pathways were then translated into sitemaps and design layouts that resulted in an organized, logical, and easy-to-find experience for travellers.

Itineraries: Guiding the Curious Traveler

To encourage tourists to "Wander Like a Local,” TNB helped OHTO take a fresh approach to their itineraries. These curated pathways invite visitors to explore the destination through the lens of local stories and authentic experiences.

Our teams designed itineraries with each of their target audiences in mind. The itineraries are tailored to cater to different interests, whether it's families from Toronto seeking the quietness of a quaint small town, or urban nature lovers looking for the perfect fall road-trip.

Each itinerary is a carefully designed journey, providing step-by-step directions and captivating high-quality images that bring the visitor's imagination to life. By showcasing accommodation providers, tourism experiences, and attractions, these itineraries elevate OHTO’s tourism products, making trip-planning easy.

Backpack: A Digital Companion for the Modern Traveler

Supporting tourists through all stages of the travel planning pathway is what separates TNB from other agencies. For OHTO, we create a Backpack functionality to improve the way travellers engage with their trip planning, including sourcing referrals for things to do, places to eat, and where to stay.

The new consumer website was built with the ability for visitors to save and download their selected attractions, experiences, and accommodations using a Backpack. Then they can share those items via email.  

Not only is this an incredible useful trip planner, the Backpack feature extends its support to areas with unreliable internet connectivity by enabling offline browsing and downloadable trips.

Whether traversing through areas with low internet availability or sharing their plans with fellow travellers, the Backpack ensures a seamless and personalized experience. This met the objectives of creating a mobile-first digital solution for target audiences.

Services Provided:

Branding identity (visual identity & guidelines)

Brand promise, tagline, key messages

Brand positioning/story & brand pillars

Strategy for target visitor personas & profiles

Visual templates for social media content & ads

Website design & development

Content strategy (SEO)

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Results

The impact of the new consumer website is undeniable. With a 24% surge in traffic and a remarkable 33% increase in engagement, the website has successfully captured the attention and imagination of visitors.

The Backpack functionality showed incredible results: website visitors saved the listing of 1,400 businesses or attractions, and travellers downloaded or shared their Backpacks 984 times. As a testament to the mobile friendly nature of the new website, time spent on the website using a phone or tablet device jumped an incredible 18%.

Since its launch, the site referred 43,267 outbound clicks to tourism business partners from the Come Wander website.

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