Sandpoint Joins Internet Trivia Game
To help lure tourists and tout Sandpoint as a vacation getaway, the city has tapped into a cyberspace trivia game.
This week, Sandpoint joined dozens of cities across the country in offering prizes to Internet users who visit the city on-line and answer local trivia questions.
“In terms of getting people all over the United States to look at Sandpoint, this is a terribly cheap and creative way to do it,” said Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jonathan Coe.
Within the next month, more than 10,000 people will visit Sandpoint via the Internet. It’s hoped some of those virtual visitors will materialize as tourists next year, Coe said.
“With this we are going to reach way beyond the usual audience we get with tourism promotions,” he said.
The contest Sandpoint joined is called TRICKnetTREAT. It’s a game that sends computer users to about 50 different cities. Once people land in a city they must search the screen for the correct answer to a trivia question.
The “clue hunt” lasts eight weeks. Participants get their name entered in a drawing for each correct answer, so the more cities they visit the better the odds.
Grand prize winners can earn a four-day ski vacation to Sandpoint, a one-week vacation in southern Oregon or a trip to New York.
The concept sounds cheesy to some, but it works, said Chris Bessler. He is the publisher of Keokee Co. Publishing in Sandpoint and helped get the city into the contest.
The week the game began, Sandpoint’s homepage on the World Wide Web was visited 9,542 times. The page typically averages 2,000 visits a month.
“There is no question we are seeing a big jump in traffic because of this,” Bessler said. “It’s a great device for letting people find out about Sandpoint.”
A similar contest, also sponsored by USA CityLink, was held last summer. At its busiest, the contest page logged 200,000 visits a day.
The trivia questions are all true and false and not meant to be too difficult. Bessler helped write the questions for Sandpoint, such as “Our lake (Pend Oreille) is so deep the Navy tests submarines in it?”
The answer is easy for residents in this region, Bessler said, but not for someone in New York. Most people will have to hunt through the information on Sandpoint’s online page and see pictures of the town in the process.
“This is simply an exciting way to use the Internet as a way of promoting Sandpoint,” Coe said. “It’s a clever idea we think will work.”
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: TricknetTreat The address for Sandpoint Online which has more information about the contest and a link to USA CityLink is http://www.keokee.com/sptonlin.html.