What is it about OKConnect and Okanagan Tourism?
Synopsis – About OKConnect:
- OKConnect searches, finds, obtains, collects, consolidates and organizes tourism information from all over the Internet and from other sources in the Okanagan Area.
- Organizes Okanagan tourism information into categories for easy access & reference.
- Organizes Okanagan tourism information of things, places and events on category pages for easy reference.
- Provides links to external (parent) websites that provide more detail regarding Okanagan Tourism.
- OKConnect.events becomes the hub, a central place to find out about Okanagan tourism locations, events and things to do.
- Helps visitors and residents alike, visiting or living in the Okanagan, by providing tourist locations and events information so they can plan out their trip to worthwhile locations in our beautiful Okanagan.
A Little about the Okanagan
A little information about Okanagan Tourism is appropriate to gain a perspective of the purpose of OKConnect.events.
The Okanagan area comprises of 3 regional districts; North – Central – South. The names of these districts are simple; North Okanagan Regional District, Central Okanagan Regional District, but the South has a different name, it is; Okanagan-Similkameen Regional District. For the purposes of this website, Okanagan-Similkameen is referred to as South Okanagan.
The total size of the Okanagan is 20,831.02 km² or about 8042.90178664086 mi², according to statistics.
In this huge Okanagan area, are lakes, beaches, countless trails to hike or bike, rolling hills and mountains, wonderful agriculture for fruit, many vineyards and of course, natures beautiful scenery.
That is the bread and butter of the Okanagan Tourism industry, giving rise to hotels, resorts, restaurants, beach-water related businesses, hiking & adventure businesses, camping, tours, and more.
There is no denying it, the Okanagan is a beautiful and warm place to visit from spring to fall seasons and for local residents to get to know your Okanagan better! I moved here from the Lower-mainland (Greater Vancouver Area) years ago and grateful for that opportunity since.
What promoted the creation of OKConnect.events?
In 2012, statistics were analyzed regarding tourism in the Okanagan. They found 88% of the visitors that come to the Okanagan, have preplanned their trips by using the Internet, to search out information about the Okanagan and things to do. While tourists were in the Okanagan, 37% used their computer devices (laptops, tablets or smartphones) to search the Internet during their visit.
This is a huge fact and an important one. Those statistics were for 2012. It is now many years later and do you think the use of smart phones or any computer device accessing the Internet to search out information on Okanagan Tourism locations increased and became more important?
Of course it increased and became more important!
What statistics did not reveal, is to what level of skill, on average, did these tourists have to successfully search and find on the Internet, information on any tourism location or event?
What is known from website design statistics, is the average person spends around 30 seconds on a website. With such a short span to read a website, how would this translate to the amount of time the average person, with average understanding of how search engines work, spends digging through search engines to find tourism locations? I fear the answer is not long either.
The short time allotted by people to find Okanagan tourism locations is not the only challenge to prospective tourists.
On my lengthy and deep search on the Internet for Okanagan Tourism websites, I found that information about any tourism category on the Internet tended to be sporadic, broken and hard to find. When I did find websites with tourism information, it tended to be disconnected, disjointed, out of date, and for some, poorly organized on the webpage. What was also disappointing, were people working in the tourism industry showed to have a poor understanding of the Internet and how a website should function and how to maintain a website. The Do-It-Yourself (DYI) websites were especially bad.
That was only half of it.
For any website, especially tourism related websites, competition for space on the first page search results of Google or any search engine can be fierce. This means, most well intended websites about tourism in the Okanagan will not reach first page Google results, let alone find their way to the second, third or deeper count search result pages. Then add research information that found the majority of people never go beyond the first page results, few go to the second page and a very small number go further.
Simply the majority of the Internet, in regards to information on tourism locations and events in the Okanagan, is a mess of poorly designed and poorly laid-out content websites. To promote tourism and support the tourism industry, why has Okanagan Tourism never considered organizing this information into one website? —What a grand idea!
This is where OKConnect.events comes in.
Main Purpose of OKConnect.events
Our main purpose is to search, find, analyze, collect, consolidate, and organize tourism location and event information for all Okanagan. Here on OKConnect.events, we provide anyone quick access to that information. This consolidation of information comes from hundreds of websites all over the Internet, brought here, into one website, where anyone can find out the important information about a tourism place or event in the Okanagan.
OKConnect.events serves everyone from North to the South and West to the East of all Okanagan!
About OKConnect.events — All In One Website
Essentially, there is not one website that has everything together for Okanagan tourists, to find what they need in one website. Hence, OKConnect.events was born amid the scattering and misplaced information “to become that One Website” where information for all things good for visiting and sight-seeing the Okanagan are contained here.
OKConnect.events is the hub
We are akin to a hub of information, like a portal to find what you need to know. People can then use the many links we provide to move to the parent website for a tourism location or event. OKConnect.events takes out the arduous, painful and fruitless searching, to give you, the happy tourist or local resident, the crucial information to find what you need in a snap.
…but if you really need to keep searching the Internet, by all means go for it!
More to Come
We say “more to come” because it takes a lot of time and energy to collect the information from all sources and consolidate it here into one website, during which OKConnect.events is open for access.
Updating Tourism Information
This takes time too and to go through each category page and location is time consuming to say the least.
If you know a particulare location or even displayed here in OKConnect is out of date, then please let us know, we welcome helpful input and information.
You can let us know via our “Report an Error” contact form.
Other Websites Are Still Important
What OKConnect.events builds is information from other tourism and tourist related websites, so we can provide the important details about a tourism place or event in the Okanagan. The purpose of OKConnect.events is not to replace other websites. Other websites should remain, and in fact, many need to be updated and improved.
