Do you own or operate a business in the Peterborough region that relies on tourism? Do you have expenses from making your business COVID-safe for customers?
If so, there’s still time to apply for up to $20,000 in non-repayable financial support under the Tourism Resiliency Funding Program, offered by Peterborough & The Kawarthas Economic Development and Community Futures Peterborough.
The deadline to apply for funding is 5 p.m. on Friday, February 12th.
Any business in the City or County of Peterborough, Hiawatha First Nation, or Curve Lake First Nation that relies on visitors or tourists for revenue is eligible for funding. These businesses could include restaurants, museums, hotels and motels, entertainment businesses, and more.
You can apply for funding between $2,500 and $20,000 to cover eligible one-time expenses your business has incurred (or will incur) from adapting to the pandemic. The expenses can be retroactive back to June 1, 2020 and up to December 31, 2021.
Eligible expenses include costs to implement health and safety protocols (such as purchase of personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies for workers), modifications to your business to accommodate physical distancing of customers (such as patio furniture, patio heaters, plexiglass dividers, hotel room defogging and disinfecting machines, double-door systems, HVAC upgrades), or digital upgrades to allow you to safely serve customers (such as virtual queue and timed-entry ticketing).
While the funding does not need to be paid back, your business must be able to contribute at least 20 per cent towards the expenses. For example, if your business spent a total of $10,000 on HVAC upgrades, your business must be able to cover $2,000 of the expense when applying to the Tourism Resiliency Funding Program for the remaining $8,000.
Not all expenses will be covered under the program. Ineligible expenses including marketing expenses (such as advertising or promotion), costs for marketing agencies or consultants, or expenses that have already been covered by other programs such as Digital MainStreet.
You can apply for funding for more than one type of eligible expense, but the maximum funding request for all expenses cannot collectively exceed $20,000. Taxes paid on expenses are eligible for funding.
If you’ve applied for funding under other support programs, you can still apply to Tourism Resiliency Funding Program — as long as the expenses have not already been funded under another program.
The deadline to apply for funding is 5 p.m. on Friday, February 12th. You can complete an online application form at peterboroughed.ca/funding.
Successful applicants will be notified the week of Monday, February 15th, and will be connected with Community Futures Peterborough.
For more information about the program, visit peterboroughed.ca/funding or contact Joe Rees, Economic Development Officer – Tourism Sector with Peterborough & The Kawarthas Economic Development, at 705-872-6852 (mobile) or at jrees@peterboroughed.ca.
This story was created in partnership with Peterborough & The Kawarthas Economic Development.
