Get ready to Explore Nanaimo! Use your passport for discounts at more than 40 area attractions, local businesses, and special activities between February 28 and May 20, 2011. Keep your passport over the summer to use during the bonus week October 11-16, 2011.

Have your passport initialed by at least one business in each category, and you will be entered to win bi-weekly prizes and a $1,000 Nanaimo Staycation package. Please note there is one entry per person and you must have your passport present to claim your prize.

The Package includes:

• A West Coast Fishing Trip with Intrepid Charters
• Dinner for two at Acme Restaurant
• $50 Gift Certificate for A & W Restaurants
• Tea for Two at The Grand Hotel Nanaimo
• One Overnight Stay at Painted Turtle Guesthouse
• … And Many more!

Passports are just $5.00 and can be purchased at (cash only):

• Beban Park Recreation Centre
• Nanaimo Aquatic Centre
• Oliver Woods Recreation Centre
• Bowen Park Social Centre
• Nanaimo Ice Rink
• All Serious Coffee locations ~ Commercial Street, Hammond Bay Rd, Southgate Plaza, Pipers location, and Beaufort Centre
• Tourism Nanaimo Visitor Centre ~ Beban House, on Bowen Road.

Visit the official 2011 Passport to your City website to view the participating businesses and to sign up to win prizes

For more information please contact Tourism Nanaimo at 250-756-0106.

I’ll admit it. I’m excited.

Why?

The 2011 Nanaimo Passport to your City will be here by the end of the month! Last year, with the help of five amazing people from Leadership BC, Tourism Nanaimo created Explore Nanaimo – Passport to Your City. The program was designed to get residents of Nanaimo out of their house to enjoy all the great attractions that the Harbour City has to offer — because, really, there are endless things to do in and around Nanaimo.

Passport to Your City was a great success; so this year, we’ve decided to extend the length of the program to three months! My goal is to have Nanaimoites spend the whole of Spring 2011 enjoying what their wonderful city has to offer, from local fairs and featured restaurants, to outdoor adventures by boat or learning about our city’s colourful history and everyday cultural experiences.

As I mentioned earlier, the Passport to your City program has been extend from three weeks to three months. Starting February 28th and ending May 20th, Nanaimo businesses will be offering special discounts for those residents and visitors who have purchased a Nanaimo Passport to your City. Just a sample of some included discounts:

• free admission for swimming or skating
• 2 for 1 on all Wild Play activities
• 10-30% off boating and fishing tours
• 2 for 1 coffee and lattes
• 2 for 1 appies at your favourite restaurants
• the list goes on and on…

So, are you ready to get your passport yet? Me too! A 2011 Nanaimo Passport to your City is only $5! Really, when you see all the discounts and promotions inside, you’ll realize that it’s an absolute steal of deal. Discounts range in value from $2 to all the way to $30.

Getting out and exploring your city can be so much fun, and if you’re lucky enough you could be the winner of a truly deluxe Nanaimo visitor experience. Once you have your passport and are ready to take advantage of all the great discounts, you can enter in for some awesome prizes and the ultimate Nanaimo Staycation Grand Prize. I am so excited to be able to offer such a great prize. We have had some amazing businesses donate prizes to this year’s grand prize. Here’s how you can qualify for the prizes:

Purchase a passport for $5 at one of the following locations:

• Participating Serious Coffee locations
• Nanaimo Aquatic Centre
• Beban Park Recreation Centre
• Tourism Nanaimo Visitor Centre on Bowen Road

Visit businesses within the passport and take advantage of the great discounts. Make sure to have your passport initialled by a staff person when you use a discount.

Once you have at least 5 initials, just register your Passport to your City on the official passport website. You will need the password found in your passport to register.

Once registered, you will be eligible to win biweekly prizes and the Nanaimo Staycation Grand Prize. To claim the prize, you must bring in your passport with initials from at least five locations!

So, spread the word. Don’t keep these great discounts a secret! Tell all your friends and family. This is going to be fun. I can’t wait to see everyone out exploring Nanaimo. If you have any questions about the passport please send me an email at amanda@tourismnanaimo.com or visit the official passport website!

Cheers,

Amanda Evoy

Manager, Marketing & Communications
Tourism Nanaimo

Every year, we produce two publications that serve as your guide to Nanaimo. Whether you’re looking for a place to eat, a bed to lay your head on, a hike through nature or a tour of Nanaimo’s history, these two guides have you absolutely covered.

Map and Attractions Guide 2011

• Why to choose Nanaimo
• Recreational activities
• Arts and cultural amenities
• Beautiful photographic imagery
• Where to stay
• How to get here
• Relocation information

Travel Planner and Accommodation Guide 2011

• Activities and attractions
• Dining
• Shopping
• Parks & trails
• Helpful maps

You can find them all over town, or, if you want to say “hi!”, you can also drop into one of our two visitor centres and we’d be happy to look through the guide with you and point out some of the great experiences available in Nanaimo!

Even better? You can check them out right now. Seriously. Both the 2011 Nanaimo Map and Attractions Guide and the 2011 Nanaimo Travel Planner and Accommodation Guide are available on our website.

Just shy of 90,000 friendly residents, Nanaimo sits on an edge of Vancouver Island, just a mere hour and a half drive from Victoria. As a city girl like myself would expect, life here is quieter and slower (despite new highrises like the Pacifica Development), but I was pleasantly surprised to find it not only quaint — after all, the downtown strip is just three blocks long — but also full of history (fun facts: Coast Salish natives were its first inhabitants, the city itself sits on a massive coal resource and, yes, it’s where the nanaimo bar was born).

It only took me two days and two nights to love this little town, and here are some reasons why you just might, too.

Read more…

We all know why Nanaimo and Vancouver Island are so great, and its wonderful to read about visitors discovering the charms of our Harbour City. May Globus has nothing but great things to say about Nanaimo over at Sweetlife. So what are you waiting for? Head on over and find out why she fell in love with Nanaimo and ‘Island Time’!

Dinner Murder Mystery at Acme Restaurant on Saturday at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm). It’s the Hallowe’en event of the season as luminaries from the arts community gather for the wake of their devoted patron. But the ghoulish gathering takes on even greater significance when it raises the dead, and sends another to a similar fate. More importantly, can the worlds of ballet, opera and household cleaning all co-exist in the same room? An interactive evening of murder mystery fun that will test your skills as a detective while enjoying the hilarity. Dress theme is “Ghoulishly Black”. For ticket info check out www.englishentertainment.ca

Downtown Nanaimo is hosting Halloween activities for the little ones. Bring your little ghost, goblin, or spider man downtown for trick or treating from 12pm-3pm and look for the merchants with displaying black and orange balloons to find the candy loot. Trick or Treat maps can be found at the participating merchant. In addition, just outside Bocca in the Old City Quarter you will find Halloween crafting from noon-3pm and Halloween stories will be told at 2pm at the Harbour front Library. For more info check out www.dnbia.ca/events/downtown-trick-or-treat

Island Haunt presents its annual haunted house, the “Labyrinth of Darkness” at the Beban Park fairgrounds on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 7pm-11pm and admission is $8 per person. Enter into the world of evil darkness and come experience the ongoings that no-one talks about behind closed doors. ‘Labyrinth of Darkness’ is certain to have an impact on everyone who enters it. The International Association of Haunted Attractions identifies the ‘Labyrinth of Darkness’ as a High Startle, Low Gore attraction, signifying that the attraction will contain many startling scares using hidden corridors and misdirection. There will be little, if any, blood, guts or gore. For more information check out www.islandhaunt.com

Shmooze Productions presents The Rocky Horror Show LIVE at the Nanaimo Centre Stage. On a dark and stormy night, an unsuspecting couple “accidentally” are drawn into an unusual world. Come join Brad and Janet as they meet Riff Raff, Magenta, Columbia, Rocky, Eddie, Dr. Scott, Narrator and, of course, FrankNFurter! This musical extravaganza includes all the hits from the movie, including Science Fiction Double Feature, Dammit Janet and The Time Warp. Come on out Saturday or Sunday night and participate! For more info check out www.schmoozeproductions.com

Halloween Trick or Treat at Country Club Mall on Sunday from 4pm-5pm. This event is happening all throughout the centre and all of the merchants at Country Club Centre are looking forward to seeing you and have goodies for your treat bag. Have a safe and fun Halloween at Country Club Centre. Volunteers from “Crimestoppers” will be at the JYSK and Save on Foods entrances. Help support this organization by making a small donation.

Sink or Swim Scuba is hosting its 2nd Annual Costume Contest and Underwater Pumpkin Carving Contest at Madrona Beach in Nanoose. We’re celebrating Halloween in three different ways, dress up with Halloween flair and go for a dive, or carve a pumpkin under water wearing traditional dive gear or, do both, dress up and carve your pumpkin. Add some fun. Enter your underwater pumpkin masterpiece for a chance to win prizes. Join us for eats, treats! Register today by contacting us at Sink or Swim Scuba. Family and Friends welcome. For more info check out their website www.sosscuba.ca

Dive Outfitters is hosting an Underwater Pumpkin Carving Contest and Costume Party on Sunday from 12pm-3pm. A fun filled scuba diving event where the public plays an important role. We need you to come down and help judge the pumpkins that the divers so artfully carve under water. Divers work their way through an underwater challenge course on their way to the pumpkin patch to pick their pumpkin. They then carve their pumpkin under water and return to shore for judging. Hot chocolate is available along with hot dogs, cookies and other goodies. This event is a fundraiser for the BC Kidney Foundation to raise awareness of kidney disease and the need for organ donation to help those on the extensive organ transplant list. For more info check out www.nanaimodiveoutfitters.ca

/A\ Channel News has all the details:

Want to know the best spots to land a huge salmon or watch thousands spawn? Need help navigating the island’s wine trail? Looking for fun kid-friendly activities? It’s all here in the palm of your hand: The best of the island and its hidden gems – from Victoria to Port Hardy – with tips on peak times to see wildlife, which trails to avoid if you’re not hard-core, easy ways to save money and more.

Vancouver Island Exploration Guide is the island’s most complete app guide out there. And it keeps getting bigger. Download it and you get free updates for life. Here’s what else:

•130 entries & 742 colour photos
•Photo slideshows to help you decide where to go
•All-new insider hints, tips and descriptions from an islander
•Google maps with directions and pushpins for each entry
•GPS tracking so you know what’s nearby
•50+ FREE attractions and activities
•One-click website links and phone calls
•Offline content you can access anywhere
•Entries sorted by name, distance, price and region
•The ability to post interactive comments, save favourites, share photos

Make the most of your time on the island that readers of Conde Nast Traveller magazine consistently rank the “Best North American Island.” This easy-to-use app will take you to the best spots and give you practical advice along the way. Start traveling like a local today.

The Vancouver Island Exploration Guide for the iPhone and iPod Touch

Many of Tourism Nanaimo's wonderful Members are featured in the App!

You can download the Vancouver Island Exploration Guide for $2.99 on iTunes.

The Celebrity Millennium sits in Nanaimo Harbour

Downtown Nanaimo pulled out all the stops and made a very good impression. From the Downtown Farmer’s Market with musical entertainment provided by Wellington Secondary School and John Barsby Community School band students, to an RCMP officer dressed to impress in full regalia, and many of the downtown restaurants serving up Nanaimo Bars like they were going out of style, there was never a dull moment, that’s for sure.

Busy, busy, busy!

Tourism Nanaimo & DNBIA team up to help visitors!

The passengers were from all over the world; we met people off the ship from Europe (Britain, Germany, the Netherlands), North America (as close as Seattle and as far away as Virginia, Maryland and Mexico) just to name a few. For some it was their first time to Nanaimo, and for others it was a second or third return trip to the Harbour City.

Courtenay & Zoe, ready to welcome you to Nanaimo, the Harbour City!

Some passengers took tours to nearby attractions like Cowichan Valley, the “Wine Valley of the North”; others headed west to Coombs and Port Alberni to see the goats on the roof and the McLean Saw Mill. Wherever they ended up the feedback was great, especially from those who stayed in Downtown. According to many of the passengers, Nanaimo is the most welcoming port they have ever been to, and with so many services set up specifically for the cruise ship passengers – like a free shuttle provided by DNBIA and Tourism Nanaimo from the harbour to the Old City Quarter and a DNBIA volunteer to greet every passenger that disembarked, and help them to plan out their day – it’s no wonder they felt welcomed!

Thanks to Tide Rip Tours, Tourism Nanaimo was invited up to the small community of Telegraph Cove to experience a one-of-a-kind opportunity: Grizzy Bear Watching. Like Whale Watching, Grizzly Bear Watching is one of the most exciting tourist attractions on Vancouver Island. So, comfortably aboard a two of Tide Rip Tours‘ boats, we left Telegraph Cove at 7:00am and spent the next nine hours enjoying the beauty of Vancouver Island. Along the way, we ran into dolphins, deer, cormorants, orca whales and, of course, grizzly bears!

Wanting to share a glimpse of what we saw, we brought along a camera and took a whole bunch of photos!

Courtenay, Amy, Heather and Amanda were more than happy to drive up the island and take in the sights at Telegraph Cover.

Telegraph Cove. It was quiet in the morning, but when we arrived back in the afternoon, it was an absolutely bustling little village, full of locals and travellers, alike!

After a two hour boat ride, we arrived at a floating dock and transferred into two separate herring skiffs. They’re the perfect way to travel through the many estuaries of Knight Inlet.

Baby animals everywhere!

Our awesome guide, Lindsey, took us into water so shallow that he was able to pull the skiff himself! On the shoreline we found grizzly bear prints, left behind when one of the bears came down to the shore to look for salmon!

Mama Bear and her three cubs.

On the way home we were met by a pod of 40 or 50 dolphins. They trailed along beside us for about ten minutes, playing in our boats wake and jumping high out of the water!

Fed by glaciers, the water in Knight Inlet is an amazing turquoise colour.

Courtenay, our Manager of Visitor Services, gives Tide Rip Tours a big thumbs up!

Tide Rip Tours also has a great video about their service:

It was a wonderful adventure, and we’re very grateful that our hosts invited us to experience the grizzly bears and other animals of Telegraph Cove and Knight Inlet! For more information on Tide Rip Tours you can visit their website or find them on Facebook.

All photos © Aidan Moher, 2010.

Whether you’re a visitor or a resident, Nanaimo’s an easy city to love. This video showcases some of the best aspects of our great city, and shows why it’s one of Vancouver Island’s most exciting and diverse travel destinations!

The Package includes:

We’ll be back in 2011 with an even bigger and better Passport to your City promotion, and you’ll have another great opportunity to explore the great Harbour City of Nanaimo!

Nanaimo was recently mentioned on a travel blog called Travelling Mamas.

This group travel blog concept was created by travel writer Shannon Hurst Lane to inspire women to get out there and explore the world — whether that means vacations with the kids, “soul-oh” trips, girlfriend getaways or romantic escapes. The blog is syndicated in national online outlets and has won numerous awards, but our overall goal is to assist consumers in making educated travel planning decisions. Traveling Mamas is on the 2009 Nielsen Power Moms list of the 50 most influential mom blogs.

Read the Traveling Mama’s Article on Nanaimo!

The second blog is getawaybc.com, a terrific resource run by Editor, Cheryl MacKinnon. It’s home to more than 3,000 articles about British Columbia and offers weekly features on best British Columbia getaways and plenty of information on British Columbia’s best fishing, hiking, SCUBA diving, dining and so much more!

Read Discover The Summer Side of Nanaimo, British Columbia!

The Vancouver Island Floating Boat & Marine Show is always a fun event, and this year was no different. You couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day to head downtown, grab a bite to eat and view some of the most impressive boats on Vancouver Island!

We’re already looking forward to the 7th Annual Floating Boat & Marine Show!

All photos © Aidan Moher, 2010.

Have you picked up a Passport to your City yet? If so, you’re already enjoying all the great discounts and deals offered by over 40 Nanaimo-area businesses and attractions! If you haven’t, what are you waiting for! You’ve got just 5 more days to enjoy Nanaimo, save a bunch of money and enter to win the Grand Prize, a $1000 Nanaimo Staycation!

Visit Tourism Nanaimo’s official Passport to your City website for more information!

Get ready to explore your city!

Tourism Nanaimo has teamed with Leadership BC and businesses throughout Nanaimo to bring you fantastic discounts and exciting opportunities. We open the doors for you to explore what’s in your own backyard, right here in Nanaimo.

How it Works…

Buy a Passport to your City for just $5 at any of the following locations:

• Any Nanaimo Coastal Community Credit Union
• Serious Coffee ~ Commercial Street, Hammond Bay Rd, Southgate Plaza
• Widsten Property Management ~ Comox Road
• Tourism Nanaimo Visitor Centre ~ Beban House, Bowen Road

Use your passport for discounts to more than 40 area attractions, local businesses, and special activities between May 16 and June 6, 2010. To begin your exploration, start by going over all the discounts within your passport. Decide what discounts and attractions you are going to visit and start planning your adventure. **One passport per person. Get from place to place with the Regional District of Nanaimo Transit System. FREE day passes are available at the Beban House Visitor Centre, while quantities last.

Prizes and the Grand Prize…

Looking for the ultimate staycation? Use your passport to explore what Nanaimo has to offer, have your passport stamped by at least one attraction in all four categories, and enter to win a $1,000 Nanaimo Staycation package with the form located of the right hand side of this website.

Please note you must have your passport present to claim your prize.

For more information visit the Official Tourism Nanaimo ‘Passport to your City’ website or contact Tourism Nanaimo at 250-756-0106 or by email at info@tourismnanaimo.com.