American Tourists Aren’t Flocking to Halifax Yet, But They’re Coming Soon
HALIFAX — On August 9th, a new lifeline was given to the struggling tourism sector when the federal government finally allowed vaccinated Americans to visit Canada once again. Historically, Americans have been a key customer base for Halifax and Nova Scotia businesses during the tourism season.
But so far, tourism operators have not seen an influx of people coming from south of the border.
“I think a lot of them are still a little leery about what’s going on…but I’m assuming it’s going to pick up,” says Paul McNeil, the owner and operator of Halifax Titanic Historical Tours.
“But with this business, there’s no rhyme or reason to it, you just got to go with the flow and see what happens each day.”
According to stats provided by Tourism Nova Scotia, Americans bring millions of dollars in revenue into the province every year.
“Pre-COVID, about 10 percent of visitors to Nova Scotia were from the United States, generating more than $200 million in tourism revenues for tourism operators in Nova Scotia,” said Kelli MacDonald, director of communications for Tourism NS. “In 2019, Nova Scotia welcomed 2.4 million visitors from all over the world and provincial tourism revenues were among the highest they’ve ever been at $2.64 billion.”
According to tourism NS, the average American tourist spends an entire week here while visiting the province, spending $2,250 “per visitor party.”
Prior to the pandemic, McNeil was used to getting 95 per cent of his business from American tourists. Now he has seen some success from customers coming from Ontario and other Canadian provinces, but it’s not quite the same as the 2019 season. Not having any cruise ships visiting the city this season has been a big setback for tourism operators.
“It’s day and night,” said McNeil. “I really rely on cruise ships… every day (back in 2019) I was going with my van basically full with 10 guests off the cruise ships (compared to only two-four people now).”
Ambassatours is one of the biggest tourism companies in Halifax. The operator, known for such famous attractions as the Harbour Hopper, traditionally relies on Americans for about half of their business- many of whom came from the cruise ships.
Despite this, Ambassatours CEO Dennis Campbell says there were very few Americans going on tours during the first week of the US border reopening.
But there is good news on the horizon. Campbell said advanced bookings for September and October are growing with Americans.
“We’ve seen a flock of bookings,” said Campbell. “We haven’t seen a lot of Americans yet; we’ve had a few. But we are delighted with the level of bookings we’re seeing.”
“We’re cautiously optimistic. Our sales are definitely strong-stronger than we had anticipated…”
McNeil and Campbell are both optimistic about what 2022 will bring when Cruise ships will be allowed back onto Canadian shores. So far, the interest from cruise lines and travelers for 2022 has been incredible.
“Most people who were booked for 2020-21 [but had to cancel] have rebooked for 2022. So, I have days already sold out,” said McNeil.
Despite the lack of American customers, Campbell and other operators have been pleased with how relatively well they are doing with visitors from the Atlantic region and the rest of Canada.
For Campbell, it surpassed his expectations. Ambassatours was preparing for another slow year like 2020 was and chose not to utilize all their tour vessels. But now they are selling out on a lot of their attractions-albeit with a lower capacity due to health restrictions.
“We were preserving cash and did not prepare all of our Harbour Hoppers for operation,” said Campbell. “If we knew then what we knew now, we would have spent the cash and got more ready.”
But the Ambassatours CEO cautions that the industry is far from out of the woods. Even though this season went better than expected, it’s still a far cry from the type of business they were doing in 2019.
“I would say it’s nowhere near August 2019-that was a near-record year,” said Campbell. “2020 was on target to be a record year (until the pandemic hit).”
