– Bill Collette is Executive Director of the Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at 250.724.6535.
PORT ALBERNI – The Alberni Valley Chamber of Commerce is working on at least two exciting projects right now. The first is our annual Shop Local Program now called ‘Try Home First.’
Through that program, we collect a large number of $100.00 Gift Certificates from various businesses and in turn we purchase a $25.00 one for each received. We then visit, by surprise and unannounced, each participating business for each gift card they have provided to us. We then courteously interrupt a sale in progress and we gift the $25.00 gift certificate to the customer to go towards their purchase.
Next, we collect names and contact info for that customer and others in the nearby vicinity. This happens throughout December (we are on track to collect at least 80 Gift Cards this season – $8000.00 plus $2000.00 from us).
Then in mid-January we’ll do a live draw on the local radio station and award some big prizes. Our top winner will get $25 X $100.00 cards and the next few winners won’t be far behind that! Cool and fun program meant to encourage people to try their local businesses first. That’s all we ask!
Our next program is a training program for at minimum 300 local Front Line Staff. These folks will be granted 5 X 4 hour courses aimed at helping them in their future careers and at the same time assisting them in assisting visitors to the area. Called the Alberni Valley Tourism Training Program (find us on Facebook) the concept is backed by the City of Port Alberni through a grant they received and it also supported by Community Futures and of course ourselves at the Chamber of Commerce.
Our ‘students’ will go through Worldhost training, Social Media, Cultural learning and Tourism within the Alberni Valley. This program is planned for 20 months and will include people from many of our local stores and schools.
