Greater Sudbury wants to find new ways to attract visitors and city officials are hoping local entrepreneurs can help. Sudbury Tourism has put out a call for tourism-related ideas from business owners, entrepreneurs or organizations. “Ideas that are selected, we will work with the applicant and bring them forward to the presentation that will be happening in early September,” said Lara Fielding, Sudbury’s manager of tourism and culture. Fielding calls the special funding a spinoff of the tourism development fund, where selected ideas could see funding between $5,000 and $100,000, depending on the idea. “It’s to increase hotel stays, increase the length of stay and attract tourists that haven’t been to Sudbury before,” she said. That includes tourists like brothers Enno and Janne Güth from Germany, who are visiting the nickel city for the first time. Their local hosts brought them to the Big Nickel and Dynamic Earth on Wednesday. The brothers admit they knew very little about Sudbury before their arrival earlier this week. “It’s a big mining city, that was pretty much the only thing we knew about it,” Janne said. Visiting from Germany “We went to the other science centre and just looked around a little bit, and other than that we just drove around and saw the city,” Enno said. The Big Nickel itself was a pitch idea more than 60 years ago by then firefighter Ted Szilva. Szilva suggested creating a giant replica of the five-cent coin as a way to mark Canada’s Centennial birthday in 1967. The idea was rejected by the committee at the time, but Szilva persisted, building the attraction with his own money. The Big Nickel is now one of Greater Sudbury’s most visited attractions. Situated on the same property as Dynamic Earth, roughly 100,000 people visit the landmark each year. That’s the kind of tourism idea that Fielding said the city wants to hear. “Brand new experience, establishment, business that you have a business plan that you’ve been looking for funding for that we could support and kickstarting that experience for our tourists,” she said. Fielding added there are always new trends in the tourism industry that could be provided for visitors to Sudbury. Concepts need to be submitted before Aug 14. In early September, pitches will be made at the ‘Wildly Unexpected’ ideas event, a Dragon’s Den-style presentation in front of the tourism development committee.
