Halifax Surpassed Pre-Covid Tourism Numbers Last Year
HALIFAX — Just one calendar year ago, the emergence of the Omicron Covid-19 variant caused fears of further illness and economic harm. One industry with the most to lose was travel and tourism, which has been among the hardest hit since the start of the pandemic.
But new figures from Discover Halifax show that people wanted to visit and travel to the city, despite Covid challenges early in the year. In 2022, a total of 1,532,000 hotel roomFts were booked and sold in Halifax; that’s five percent higher than the city’s last “normal” year, in 2019. These numbers only reflect “traditional” hotel rooms and not other forms of accommodation like Airbnb.
Discover Halifax says that, in a typical year, that many visitors would likely contribute more than $1 billion to the economy.
Tourism numbers are high despite a slow start to the year. Due to the Omicron variant, the first quarter of 2022 saw only 239,317 hotel rooms sold, a 17 percent decline from 2019. But Q2 went up 7 percent from 2019 and Q3 was also up.
The final quarter saw the biggest jump in hotel stays: 15 percent. The World Junior Hockey Championships, which the city hosted in late December, contributed as much as 6,000-8,000 of the 48,000 rooms booked.
These strong numbers may seem surprising given the challenges of Covid, labour shortages, and other factors. But one person who was expecting such good results was Discover Halifax President and CEO, Ross Jefferson.
“Actually, no,” he said matter-of-factly when asked if he was surprised by the numbers. “We were quite aggressive in our forecasts and optimistic for last year, even though, at the beginning of the year, Omicron was the leading story and the start of the first quarter was extremely difficult and negative.”
“There were a lot of business and community leaders that developed a strategy to make investments and planning in advance,” Jefferson said.
Jefferson gave props to the Hotel Association of Nova Scotia and Halifax Mayor Mike Savage for showing leadership heading into the 2022 tourism season. But he also gave credit to the individual tourism businesses, many of which hired staff early even though there were hardly any tourists at the time.
“We had a lot of employers who decided to hire their staff back at a time that really didn’t make sense. Based on the numbers they were looking at, they were literally hiring back staff when they had nothing to do because visitors weren’t coming at the time. But it paid off because when it came back Halifax was ready a lot quicker than many other destinations in Canada.”
As for Discover Halifax, the organization nearly doubled its marketing budget, from $700,000 the previous year to $1.2 million in 2022. It also focused its marketing campaigns more on areas where people would have to fly in to visit the city.
“Our agency historically focuses on what we call the rubber tire market,” explained Jefferson. “It’s the Maritime provinces; it’s where most of our repeat visitation comes from.”
“But, in this particular year, we saw an opportunity in those markets in Canada that you must fly to get here. So, we focused very specifically on Newfoundland, Ontario, and on Alberta. And we had campaigns that were brand-new in those markets and we saw some really great results.”
Discover Halifax’s website received increased internet traffic from all three provinces, Jefferson mentioned, particularly in Newfoundland, which jumped up by nearly 500 percent in 2022.
Not only did the cruise ship industry see a big rebound last year, but some major events came to Halifax — including major concerts like Shania Twain and The Offspring, as well as events that draw international attention, like the World Junior Hockey Championships.
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].