July 3, 2009

This initiative was created to highlight the importance of hiring French speaking staff in service jobs in the hospitality industry in Niagara by linking French employment centers, employees, employers and the local French college (Collège Boréal).  With the cooperation of these parties, services offered in French were more readily available to French speaking visitor of Niagara.

With the success of the project in the tourism industry, it grew in popularity in the French speaking community of Niagara.  Venture Niagara has since received requests from other CFDCs and communities interested in promoting this campaign in their own regions.

Employers receive promotional tools with the “Bonjour” logo to support the campaign, window decals, posters, tent cards and pins to identify each employee.  These items complement the www.bonjourniagara.com web site and the official tourism publication, Les Saisons magazine.  The Bonjour Niagara web site was developed to promote Niagara as a destination to French-speaking visitors but also to identify “French friendly” properties and attractions in Niagara.  The web site is now the French component of the region of Niagara’s web presence www.tourismniagara.com.  The web site received approximately 50,000 unique visits last year.  This generated hundreds of phone calls to French speaking staff for the “Les Saisons” magazine and extra revenue for advertisers on the web site.  The bonjour campaign inspires the francophone community to speak and work in French.

This pilot project united 35 partnering organizations interested in attracting the francophone market.  Bonjour Niagara distributed over 250 of the “Bonjour” pins to hospitality staff and over 250 pins were given to community partners throughout the summer of 2007.  Eight French speaking seniors were trained in customer service to execute a research questionnaire at 4 different locations in Niagara.  These interviewers spoke to over 450 French speaking travelers from Québec.  The network of contacts between community and industry is an important connection in creating a beneficial situation for all involved at a relatively low cost.

This project has continued for three years and grown to allow Venture Niagara to now sell promotional packages of marketing materials suitable to start a “Bonjour” campaign in other regions of Ontario and could even be a national program.

For more information, contact:
Venture Niagara Community Futures Development Corporation
20 Pine Street North Studio A , Thorold, Ontario
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 905-680-8085

Project:  Bonjour Niagara Campaign