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Edmonton Branding and Tourism strategy

David A said:
Perceptions about downtown do feed a lot of the negativity, both from residents here many who seldom venture downtown, are comfortable with a very suburban life and visitors who come here expecting much more downtown given the size of our city.

Its not that our downtown is especially unsafe compared to other cities, but it is not very lively. There is very limited retail and shopping downtown now which I am certain most visitors notice and is very different from other cities our size and larger. A lot of empty storefronts do not provide a positive image or a perception of economic growth.

Again, I feel our business community needs to do more, but many of our larger businesses are either suburban based or branch offices of companies headquartered elsewhere, so they do not have much invested in improving our downtown. And our city council doesn't seem to be taking a strong leadership role to promote downtown more either. While we do have some downtown councilors, the current ones seem very quiet and our mayor is from a suburban area, I don't sense downtown is a big priority for him either.
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We do fall into an unhappy middle ground of "too built up for suburbanites" and "excuse me but is that a strip mall with a big box store and a large surface parking lot"?
 
Edmonton's whole tourism strategy for the longest time was "worlds largest mall", and now malls as tourist destinations are things of the past and we are kind of left with a directionless approach. downtown doesn't have much of a draw for people visiting unless its for business, and our two better areas that I think a tourist would enjoy (Whyte and 124th) are very limited for places to stay and people visiting end up staying in the suburban hotels away from everything and not even really getting to see the city easily.
 
SMayo said:
Edmonton's whole tourism strategy for the longest time was "worlds largest mall", and now malls as tourist destinations are things of the past and we are kind of left with a directionless approach. downtown doesn't have much of a draw for people visiting unless its for business, and our two better areas that I think a tourist would enjoy (Whyte and 124th) are very limited for places to stay and people visiting end up staying in the suburban hotels away from everything and not even really getting to see the city easily.
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Yes, now its not even the worlds largest anymore and given its location in the west end with many hotels even further west, it does not really draw people to things in the rest of the city.

I feel it is very odd there is so little for hotels around 124 St, although Whyte Ave does have more. IMO 124 St would be a good place to stay as it is fairly central to see things in many parts of the city, including not that far from the mall. If something were built around there (it doesn't have to be huge) I feel it would do well and may spur other development as well when people realize it makes sense.
 
David A said:
Yes, now its not even the worlds largest anymore and given its location in the west end with many hotels even further west, it does not really draw people to things in the rest of the city.

I feel it is very odd there is so little for hotels around 124 St, although Whyte Ave does have more. IMO 124 St would be a good place to stay as it is fairly central to see things in many parts of the city, including not that far from the mall. If something were built around there (it doesn't have to be huge) I feel it would do well and may spur other development as well when people realize it makes sense.
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Our hotel landscape seems to have been largely set in stone back in the 1980s, leaving AirBnB and the like to actually contend with any shifts away from that pattern.
 
IanO said:
Edmonton was featured on the Amazing Race finale last night.

YEG-Stantec Tower-High Level Bridge-Whyte-Rad Torque-Butterdome- RAM-Commonwealth
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Great captures of the city and spoiler alert on the winners - locals! The two female wrestlers from the UofA are this seasons Amazing Race Canada champions.

City looked nice and green. Good captures of river valley and a challenge involving all our sports team's mascots.

Thought there might be more media coverage or even Explore Edmonton highlighting this.

edmonton.ctvnews.ca

Several Edmonton landmarks featured in Amazing Race Canada season 10 finale

The City of Edmonton will be front and centre as the 10th season of The Amazing Race Canada comes to an end tonight on CTV at 8 p.m.
edmonton.ctvnews.ca edmonton.ctvnews.ca
 
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The_Cat said:
Calgary always has to out-do Edmonton! :)
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Yeah. I think we and Ottawa were the only cities over a million not to make the 10 most hated. Although I thought I saw a quick picture of Ottawa misplaced in the Hamilton piece.

And of course Winnipeg's piece had to have a lengthy blurb about cold winters, and Montreal's too, but oddly not Regina''s whose name is repeatedly mispronounced. A very surface level analysis and some of it not accurate.
 
David A said:
Yeah. I think we and Ottawa were the only cities over a million not to make the 10 most hated. Although I thought I saw a quick picture of Ottawa misplaced in the Hamilton piece.

And of course Winnipeg's piece had to have a lengthy blurb about cold winters, and Montreal's too, but oddly not Regina''s whose name is repeatedly mispronounced. A very surface level analysis and some of it not accurate.
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Bro, why are you even wasting your mental energy on a shitty AI-generated video 😭
 
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