Local tourism initiatives officially received their government grants to help target more visitors to the Foothills.

Cool Little Towns, which incorporates eight different municipalities, will receive $70,000 to go towards targeting the Foothills as an option for day trips and weekend getaway options from larger cities like Calgary and Lethbridge.

Davina Comstock, marketing and communications manager with the Town of Nanton, says the money is a huge boost to Cool Little Towns.

"This grant was specifically for the purposes of product development, so looking at themed driving tours and how to create them and then how to get awareness about them," she says.

Comstock says the second phase of funding is for all communities involved with Cool Little Towns including Nanton, High River, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Bragg Creek and Okotoks.

"The grant is also for hosting tourism workshops in each of the communities to get a better understanding of what our strengths were in each community, what the demand generators are, and where are people driving to and what are they doing."

There will be seven driving tours within Cool Little Towns and Comstock says there is still some work to do with how it will look.

"We haven't finalized them in terms of marketing or that aspect, but we do have our final report and essentially that is what this grant is geared towards is the actual product."

For more on Cool Little Towns visit the link here.

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