While they have no statistics yet, the County of Haliburton’s tourism department says it was “quite a good summer” for industry businesses and operators.
Manager of tourism, Angelica Ingram, gave her third quarter report to councillors last Wednesday.
She told them her department had done a lot of marketing in 2025, especially in the spring and summer.
“A lot of the data we were seeing was showing there were some real shifts in travel this year with the political climate …there was a lot of appetite and desire for Canadians to stay in Canada and from other travellers from other
countries looking at Canada as a new option for travel, so we wanted to take advantage of that.”
Without getting into specifics, she was referencing how some Canadians, and residents of other countries, are
avoiding travelling to the U.S. under president Donald Trump.
“We did a lot of marketing to Canadians, to some new markets, and we’re starting to see some results of that.
We think it was quite a good summer in terms of business and travellers to the area. We don’t have hard data yet, but anecdotally we have heard some very good things from a lot of our tourism businesses and operators and we’re
hoping this continues throughout the fall and winter and into next year,” Ingram said.
She added they had more hits on the My Haliburton Highlands website. In July, the website reached 36,200
views, and in August, 35,300, an increase of 31.5 per cent over the same months last year.
While the growth was partly driven by the integration of the Hike Haliburton Festival into the site, which generated
more than 3,100 page views, Ingram said that, even without the addition, traffic rose by 19.2 per cent.
“Google Analytics shows 18,000 active users in August, with 17,000 of those being new visitors.”
The most visited pages highlight what attracts visitors to the region, with the Home page, What’s Happening, Hike
Haliburton, Hiking Trails, and Live Entertainment leading in views.
“Traffic sources also show that the site is reaching beyond the County, with the majority of users coming from organic Google searches (12,000 sessions), followed by direct visits (7,600), County of Haliburton referrals (1,000), and social media (Facebook referrals at 451).
“These results confirm that the website is performing as a central tourism tool, both engaging new audiences
and directing them to key seasonal experiences in the Haliburton Highlands.”
Looking ahead to 2026, staff are already working on furthering the marketing strategy by creating a campaign that promotes shoulder season tourism, as well as looking at ways to improve the functionality of the website.
Ingram added they are working with a lot of different partners into next year, including hosting some workshops with the Haliburton County Development Corporation, and some cross promotion with different cultural institutions in the area, on some new ideas for next year.
The manager of tourism told council her department was also “really thrilled with how our fall Hike Haliburton
Festival, Sept. 18-21, went. We were able to grow the festival with a grant we got and through some additional
planning and organizing that Eric (Casper) and I and the team did.” They got a $25,000 grant from the federal government. She said they had more than 1,870 participants, in 44 guided hikes. Further, more than 85 volunteers leant a hand.
Another highlight was the annual business summit Sept. 23, for which Ingram reported, “we had a good turnout of
speakers and participants and we got some good feedback on how we can evolve that event going forward next year
and we’re hoping to continue that as well.” She noted 40 people attended.
