What Tourism’s Safe Return Will Look Like In Halifax
HALIFAX — Nova Scotia will open its borders to the rest of Atlantic Canada on July 3, kicking off a tentative start to the tourist season in the province.
The province hasn’t had a new case of Covid-19 in weeks, but as much as the city’s businesses crave new customers, an influx of visitors will also mean an increased risk of new cases.
It’s why the city’s tourism agencies and operators say tourism in Halifax will look different in 2020. Ross Jefferson is the CEO of Discover Halifax, the city’s tourism marketing organization.
Discover Halifax recently submitted a four-part plan to the provincial government outlining how the tourism industry in the city can safely welcome visitors this summer.
The plan starts, Jefferson says, with only opening to “safe markets” that have no or very few active cases of Covid-19.
Right now, that means the other provinces in the so-called “Atlantic Bubble.” The ideal next step is opening to other Canadian provinces with low case counts (like Saskatchewan and Manitoba), then other regions (including international ones) once their case counts drop.
“We do believe that there is a continued opportunity to partner with provinces and regions that have case counts similar to ours or lower. And that [only] partnering with safe markets makes the most sense,” Jefferson says.
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But welcoming tourists even from low-case-count regions still carries risk, so Discover Halifax and its partners revamped their 2020 tourism strategy to make sure that risk is minimized.
“There’s been an incredible amount of work done by many parties to make sure that Halifax and the region are safe,” Jefferson says.
A big part of that strategy is adjusting how visitors move around in the HRM.
That starts with obvious steps like removing public seating and putting up signs to encourage social distancing. The HRM’s newly widened sidewalks and closed-down streets also help.
But Discover Halifax has drastically changed how it markets the city, to draw visitors away from major congregation points (think the waterfront and Citadel Hill) and towards farther-flung destinations.
“Obviously [we’re trying to] drive our visitation up, but we’re making sure that they’re not all condensed into the typical tourist locations that we think about,” Jefferson says.
To do that, Discover Halifax is created a new series of itineraries designed to pull to different parts of the city and space visitors out.
The goal, Jefferson says, is to disperse visitors throughout the HRM “not only by geography but by the time of day and day of week… so that we are avoiding any large crowds.”
“We know that some people will be looking for those outdoor, open space activities, so we’ve really increased our marketing and promotion of those spaces.”
Along with new itineraries, Discover Halifax has started putting out a new visitors guide on a bi-weekly basis, adjusting the content to reflect what’s open.
“This takes into consideration the things that are open, things that visitors are able to do right now, and things that we know are safe and speak to the strategies that we put in place,” Jefferson says.
Finally, Jefferson says it is vital to strictly monitor how visitors are affecting Covid-19 cases in the city, and keep a keen eye out for changes in the epidemiology of the regions to which Nova Scotia has opened its borders.
If conditions change, Jefferson says opening and travel restrictions will need to be rolled back.
“I know people in our industry are not interested in just opening up everything. We don’t believe that is the best strategy, and I think there’s broad support around that idea,” he says. “We all live in this community as well, and we believe firmly that any significant waves of [Covid-19] coming back into our community is not good for our community, and it’s not good for our industry, as well.”
Jefferson says Discover Halifax wants to work with the provincial government to create a plan for what such a rollback would look like. However, right now no information has been made public about what such a plan would look like.