Let’s save summer! Canadian tourism industry is moderately optimistic about the coming summer season, which for many in it may be decisive

What awaits Canadian tourism this summer? Will tourism businesses be able to count on a profit that will allow them to survive in months when there are no tourists?

The coming summer will be a decisive season for many of Canada’s travel businesses, thanks to which they will either survive or fail.

Canada’s most attractive tourist regions, such as Banff and Lake Louise, earn 50-60% of their total annual income during the summer months June – September. So, they are greatly dependent on incoming tourist traffic at that time.

Incoming tourism from outside Canada does not exist. Canada has become the “Fortress Canada”, so any tourist business here can only count on local tourists. But this year, as travel restrictions continue and only a small fraction of Canadians have received the Covid-19 vaccine, travel businesses are only counting on survival.

According to representatives of the regional tourism organization Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, about half of the tourism industry in the Banff and Lake Louise region is counting on this coming summer to be as good or better than last year. Lots of people in the industry think and say out loud, “Let’s save summer!” According to them, this summer will decide whether their companies will survive.

Quebec’s regional tourism organization, Office du Tourisme de Quebec, also expects this summer to be similar to last summer.

While smaller companies are concerned about whether they will earn to survive this year, larger companies such as airlines are more optimistic about the coming season.

As the vaccination situation unfolds, Canadian airlines have partially planned to rebuild their local network in the spring and summer season. In March, WestJet and Air Canada announced plans to resume flights for destinations in the Atlantic Canada and Western Canada. Low-cost carrier Swoop has announced the addition of flights from Kelowna and Abbotsford in BC to Edmonton, Toronto, Hamilton and Winnipeg, and Flair Airlines has expanded its fleet to benefit from expected high demand. According to Swoop CEO Charles Duncan, the move is due to a surge in ticket sales among the most cautious customers who believe in speeding up vaccinations nationwide soon.

In turn, the emerging new variants of the Covid-19 infection are introducing new, more severe restrictions in places such as Quebec City, which is again in lockdown after the authorities had previously loosened the restrictions. Such phenomena can stop tourism, despite the increasing number of vaccinated Canadians.

Statistics Canada said last week that the Canadian tourism sector saw a 50% decline in 2020, compared to a 5.4% decline in the entire Canadian economy. According to this office, tourism jobs fell 28.7 % in 2020.

Destination Canada, one of whose main tasks is to promote local tourism, compared the current situation and found it worse than the combined effects of the 9/11 attacks, SARS and the global financial crisis. She also called on Canadians to help rebuild this industry by traveling locally in Canada as much as possible at a time when it will be safe to do so.

Restrictions on international travel, testing and quarantine requirements for new arrivals may force travelers to look for holiday destinations in the country. The airlines predict that the federal government will loosen certain restrictions on international travel so that this can fit in with the expansion of their flight network, which is expected to resume in May.