34 INVEST in BC 2 0 2 5 Official Publication of the BC Economic Development Association in special partnership with BCBusiness.
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T H O M P S O N O K A N A G A N
Lake, one of the region's largest and
longest-running sources of employment.
The extension project, bolstered by rising
demand for metals critical to the global
energy transition, promises to create 2,900
jobs during construction and support 1,500
ongoing operational jobs after that.
SIMPLE IDEAS, BIG IMPACT
Blessed with abundant sunshine, the
southern Interior is also a favourite four-
season destination for tourists. The Town
of Princeton showed recently how even
simple tourism marketing campaigns
with modest budgets can yield meaningful
results.
"I started going through the guest
book in our visitor centre and I noticed
we were getting people from all over
the world," says Gary Schatz, director
of economic development and tourism.
He got the idea of putting up banners on
downtown lampposts welcoming visitors
in various languages of their countries
of origin. Then the town ran a contest to
get visitors to take pictures of themselves
in front of the banner in their native
tongue. Combined with billboards at the
Kelowna airport and on highways leading
to Princeton and internet advertising, the
campaign became known as Princeton
Welcomes the World. This year it took
the Economic Development Marketing
Innovation Award (Community less than
10,000 population) at the BCEDA's annual
Economic Summit.
Just a few months in, "what we're seeing
is a steady increase in our socials," Schatz
says. Princeton's followings on Instagram
and Tiktok are both over 1,000 and visitor-
centre traffic has gone from 100 to 120
people a day in 2023 to more than 200 in
2025. It hit 328 one day in June. CONTINUED ON PAGE 36
SMALL-TOWN INNOVATION: Princeton
won a BCEDA award for its globally
themed tourism campaign
"That's a lot of traffic for a small visitor
centre," Schatz says. It's given employees
the chance to promote the town's bronze
sculpture walk, which is also getting
noticed online. Given its limited resources,
Princeton normally runs its tourism
