Donald Trump's success bumps up traffic for Cape Breton website

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 ofDonald Trump becoming president of the United States.

Since February, Trump has trounced his opponents for the Republican nomination, inching himcloser to the White House.

When Republican rival Ted Cruzsuspendedhis 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 andlocaltourism operators in Mabou and Port Hood got involved.

Then cameAmerican news crews from CNN and commentary from Fox News.The site's legitimacy was renewedafter 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 nowdoesn'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."