Donald Trump's success bumps up traffic for Cape Breton website
'Cape Breton if Trump Wins' has seen around 1.5M visitors since its launch in February, says creator
A lot has changed in the three months since Rob Calabrese created a website pitching Cape Breton Island as a refuge for Americans dreading the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States.
Since February, Trump has trounced his opponents for the Republican nomination, inching him closer to the White House.
When Republican rival Ted Cruz suspended his campaign last week, Calabrese watched his site's traffic jump five-fold.
"If you were to look at the line of traffic graph of my website versus the graph of Donald Trump getting good news, they would almost be identical, I'm sure."
There's been a 1.5 million visitors since February, Calabrese told CBC's Maritime Noon.
The Trump bump
At launch, the site 'Cape Breton if Trump Wins' began as a bit of joke, Calabrese said, since Trump's nomination seemed so unlikely back in February.
Calabrese, a DJ at Cape Breton radio station The Giant 101.9, has fielded some serious inquiries. Destination Cape Breton and local tourism operators in Mabou and Port Hood got involved.
Then came American news crews from CNN and commentary from Fox News. The site's legitimacy was renewed after President Barack Obama thanked Cape Breton for the offer at a White House state dinner in March.
"You have all these American media outlets that are writing about it, and they say, 'Oh yeah, there's that Canadian island that is welcoming people as well.' And they'll link to it there," he said.
The value of the Canadian dollar and the price of gas right now doesn't hurt interest either, Calabrese said. But tourism operators have told him there's more to it than that.
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"I'm not sure what it is that they're Googling to end up here, but you got to think that it's they're moving to Canada or moving to Cape Breton," he explained.
"But there's a lot of people, especially since Cruz has suspended his campaign, that are interested in making some kind of change."
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With files from CBC's Maritime Noon