The Explore Hamilton App will connect you to more events and businesses
On “countdown day,” – 04/03/21 – the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce launched a new resource for our community, the Explore Hamilton app. With so much economic growth coming to Hamilton soon, it is more important than ever that people be able to find local businesses quickly and easily.
“With Spooky Nook not far in the future, visitors can use the Explore Hamilton app to navigate around the city,” says Tiffany Grubb, Director of Membership and Marketing at the Greater Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a listing of businesses, as well as a whole resources tab that includes information about parking, the DORA, the BCRTA buses, and we have a link to the My Hamilton 311 app.”
The good thing in the meantime is that the app is a great resource for becoming a tourist in your own backyard, as well as accessing practical free resources on things like finding spraygrounds, hiking, and biking in our area’s nature parks.
If you don’t always know about new businesses, restaurants, and attractions that come to Hamilton, the Explore Hamilton app is a great way to pick out an area of town to explore and a new business to frequent. Business owners who are members of the Chamber of Commerce get to customize their profile in the app.
“Pins of different kinds of businesses appear on a map, and tapping on them gives more information,” says Grubb. “You can get a website, a phone number, and even a welcome video on there.”
This profile offers businesses the chance to put their best foot forward with both the local community and with incoming visitors, sharing enough information to draw people in to their brick-and-mortar businesses.
The interactive app allows you to toggle the kinds of pins you see, making it easy to see which restaurants, attractions, or shopping attractions are closest to you.
The app also links out to resources like the Butler County Visitor’s Bureau, connecting to a variety of other towns in our county who also are often holding events and have many businesses available. It’s a resource that can help people all around our area.
The community events calendar is another place that the app shines. In the past, Hamilton residents sometimes found out about music, art, and cultural events in town after the fact and wished they could have participated. Downloading the app and keeping an eye on the calendar allows locals to plan their weeks and weekends around what is available.
By listing your own events on the community calendar, you get the word out to others and make the calendar more comprehensive, which will over time make it more and more of a resource for locals and visitors alike.
“The community event calendar is as good as the information people put on it,” explains Grubb. “We are hoping that everyone will put their events as a community event on our website so that it will show up in the app.”
The app is now available in the Google Play and Apple App stores for free.