Ottawa Must Help Cruise Industry in Crisis After One-Year Ban
Beth Kelly Hatt, Melanie Colpitts and Danielle Timmons are partners at Aquila Tours and Aquila Center for Cruise Excellence.
This picture was from our team zoom call after last week’s Transport Canada announcement extending the cruise ban to February 2022 and cancelling our 2021 cruise season. We were shocked, angry, and sad, and we needed time to grieve together.
We continued to be quiet this past week as we spent time with our teams, our partners, our suppliers and other industry friends, and we grieved along with them. We grieved as we received messages like “cruise makes up 70 percent (or 80 percent or 90 percent) of my business and I don’t think I can survive,” and “I don’t know how I’ll tell my staff who are like family and have been with me for years,” and “I’ll likely lose my house, which I mortgaged to get my business through 2020.”
This is the face of small tourism businesses here at home in New Brunswick and across Canada. This may have been an announcement affecting cruise, but its impact is felt across a much wider tourism industry that is already in crisis.
Like all our friends and industry partners, we want our country’s top priority to be the health and safety of Canadians. We agree that welcoming visitors into our country, whether by cruise ship, air travel or across our land borders should only be considered when it is safe to do so. But we were not expecting something this drastic, this soon.
We were anticipating an extension that would allow for reassessment in a few months, and we continue to be shocked that one travel sector, the cruise sector, is being treated so differently from other sectors.
Extending the cruise ban for a few months would have allowed our country time to see the results of current efforts and evaluate where North America is at that time with vaccines and other factors critical to determining the timeline for a safe resumption for the entrance of visitors to our country by any means.
It would also have allowed our industry across the country to continue the process of collaborating on operational criteria and protocols to operate safely, as has been done successfully in Europe by cruise lines and local tour operators for the past six months.
We fully understand that a reassessment in a few months may still have resulted in the same outcome, but it would also have allowed for the potential of cruise in some capacity, even if it looked vastly different from what we’re used to.
This decision by the Canadian government has a drastic and devastating impact on many across the country. Aquila is just one tour operator working with the cruise industry in one Canadian port. Our singular impact from our privately-owned business operating shore excursions includes nine salaried staff, over 75 seasonal staff, and contracts with over 100 local suppliers such as transportation, restaurants, attractions, and other experience providers.
We are now very eager to hear what the government has planned to support the many Canadian tourism businesses and families who are so dramatically impacted by this decision. The federal wage subsidy has been critical to keeping tourism operators in business and staff employed, and it is imperative it continues.
In addition, we need more measures to support tourism’s small businesses. Grants for innovation, grants for upgrading skills and training, and grants for adapting to the new realities are some of the ways that could keep the tourism industry from devastating loss. Additional loans are not the answer, as most small tourism businesses have already taken on loans in an attempt to get through this crisis, and assuming more debt is beyond their capacity – many simply cannot survive and will have to close unless they receive additional support.
Our thoughts go out to our local tourism businesses and our community, as well as those throughout the country that depend on cruise and on tourism. When tourism and cruise are ready to return, what will be waiting for our visitors? Will there be anything left of our special destinations and the experiences for which they are renowned?
Few industries have suffered more, and we hear daily from so many tourism businesses who are struggling. Over the past year, they have given their all to keep going and their resiliency has been remarkable – but we are gravely concerned for the future of tourism.
At Aquila, we’re very familiar with that struggle, as we’ve faced it several times while building our business over the past 39 years. And this current situation, which sees Aquila operating for 30 months with a drop in revenue of over 85 percent, means that getting through these challenges is no small feat.
We are fortunate that our amazing team has been willing to step out of their comfort zones and into roles they did not sign up for, and their ability to adapt over the last year has enabled us to extend our runway until the return of cruise.
The training that we offer through the Aquila Center for Cruise Excellence has pivoted to virtual and online and includes new programs to help operators and destinations prepare for the return of our industry. The continued growth of this training, combined with some creativity and innovation, means we are confident that we’ll be here when cruise returns.
Aquila is committed to doing everything we can in the months ahead to ensure a successful return of tourism and cruise to our region. We will do whatever we need to do to persevere, and we want the same to be true for the many struggling businesses in tourism in our region.
We will be aligning with national lobbying efforts for increasing support for hardest-hit businesses, especially those in the tourism sector, and we’d love your help. We know cruise will return to our region, and more than anything, we want all of us to be here and ready to do what we love and welcome cruise guests back to the Bay of Fundy.
Huddle publishes commentaries from groups and individuals on important business issues facing the Maritimes. These commentaries do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Huddle. To submit a commentary for consideration, contact editor Mark Leger: [email protected].