‘Extremely Difficult’ Year As Some N.S. Tourism Operators Struggle To Meet Demand
HALIFAX – In many ways, it’s been an encouraging year for Nova Scotia’s tourism-related businesses.
Visitors are finally returning to the province in a meaningful way and many tourism operators are seeing demand approaching pre-Covid levels.
No one is saying things are back to normal, but the industry has recovered significantly from the billion-dollar losing years of 2020 and 2021.
But new data from Statistics Canada suggests the recovery might not be going as well in Nova Scotia as it is in the rest of Canada.
StatsCan’s new Canadian Tourism Activity Tracker takes data from several sources – things like flight data, hotel stays, and restaurant sales – and puts them together into one indicator that gives a “comprehensive picture of tourism activity” in the country.
Right now, the tracker reflects tourism activity until May 2022, comparing it to a benchmark in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 2022 data indicate that, as of May, Nova Scotia saw the biggest decline in Canada in domestic tourism activity and the second-biggest decline in overall and international inbound tourism.
Across the country, tourism activity was down by 21.2 percent compared to May 2019, while in Nova Scotia it was down by 26 percent.
Data still ‘experimental’
Anna Moran is the director of policy and research with Tourism Nova Scotia.
She points out that Stats Canada’s tourism tracker is still experimental and the agency itself says to use caution when interpreting the results.
Moran pays less attention to the tracker’s provincial breakdown and more to the national trends, which she checks against Tourism Nova Scotia’s internal data.
That data, she says, is “very much following that national trend.” She says some of it is even quite encouraging.
In March and April of 2022, for example, the number of people staying in overnight accommodations in the province exceeded 2019 levels.
But the tourism economy in Nova Scotia is highly seasonal and it’s tough to draw too many conclusions until data for months like July and August are released.
Until that happens, Moran says the best way to gauge Nova Scotia’s tourism recovery is by talking to operators. She says those operators are “open, they’re busy, [and] they’ve got those advance bookings in place.”
An ‘extremely difficult year’ for operators
John Simon is the president of CanadVac Travel Services and Kefi Travel.
He says he’s seen incredible demand from tourists so far this year. The problem is that the industry isn’t prepared to handle it.
“It’s been an extremely difficult year – in some ways moreso than when things were shut down,” he says.
His companies saw bookings flood in not long after Covid-19 restrictions were dropped. The interest was encouraging but the lack of tourism infrastructure created “a whole lot of problems.”
“You took a global industry and you completely shut it down. And then you tried to turn it on overnight when the government announced in March that suddenly we were open,” he says. “[But] it’s not like a factory where you can just flip the switch and all the equipment is back up to speed right away.”
As the machinations of the province’s tourism industry chug back to life, Simon says the slow start is sending “ripples through the industry.”
He sometimes has a hard time finding places for his clients to sleep, not because the rooms aren’t available but because the hotels don’t have enough staff. Meanwhile, a major shortage of rental cars has slammed the breaks on many people’s travel plans because they can’t get around once they’re here.
And that’s before the massive impact of constant flight cancellations.
“If you have, you know, a German couple that have booked three weeks to visit Atlantic Canada and suddenly their flight has been canceled and they’re not going to arrive until two days later, there’s a full itinerary that you had built for them has to shift by two days – and all those accommodation providers who are short staffed and are overbooked are now trying to adjust everything by two days,” he says.
Not enough flights
Lisa Dahr is the director of industry relations with the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia. She says the slim pickings for flights coming into Nova Scotia is a major factor affecting the province’s tourism economy.
“One of the challenges when you’re a destination like us that has relied on getting those out-of-region visitors, those international visitors coming in, is we need those connecting access points,” she says.
Airlines that were heavily impacted by the pandemic gutted their schedules and are only starting to bring them back in earnest this summer. Their priority is often major centres, which means mid-sized cities like Halifax aren’t seeing the same service as they’re used to.
“So we’ve got to try and make sure that we are a competitive destination from an air-access perspective — getting those routes back is going to play a huge role in rebuilding a lot of that market share,” Dahr says.
Moran says better air access is “critically important for full recovery” in Nova Scotia. About one-third of non-resident visitors came into the province by air in 2019.
“We’re not back at 2019 levels, but it’s improving fairly rapidly,” Moran says.
‘Demand was there’ but infrastructure wasn’t
Simon says if Nova Scotia’s tourism industry is recovering slower than other provinces the lost opportunities caused by fewer flights and rental cars have played a part.
Every tourist destination in the world has faced restart pressures but Simon argues the Maritimes might suffer more because it isn’t the “first place” travellers consider when they come to Canada.
That means when airlines are bringing back flights, or rental agencies are deciding where to send their limited number of new cars, they are first going to look at places like Toronto, Vancouver, and Quebec.
Simon also guesses that the Maritimes’ relatively small size makes it tougher for the region to absorb all these shocks.
“Atlantic Canada has less accommodations, less capacity, and the accommodations tend to be smaller, so our ability to absorb the rush is less than a place like Toronto,” he says. “I don’t think the demand this year was less than it had been in the past, it’s just that there are certain factors that mean we’re going to be behind the bigger areas of Canada.”
Simon’s businesses have so far done seen 50 percent of the traffic they did in 2019. However, he says that could have been at 75 or even 90 percent if the industry was running at full capacity.
“The demand was there,” he said.
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].