Coronavirus Fears Swell For Maritime Businesses
HALIFAX – A series of high-profile warnings, cancellations, and government announcements about the spread of Coronavirus has left the Maritime business community shaken.
A week ago, a lot of businesses in Halifax and the Maritimes weren’t that concerned about the economic impacts of the virus.
But new warnings from the Canadian government telling people to stay off cruise ships, the cancellation of the 2020 Women’s World Hockey Championship in Halifax, and new restrictions on flying and visiting care homes have changed things.
Paul MacKinnon is the CEO of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, which represents about 1,600 members in the city’s downtown core.
He says the torrent of news about the virus has left many Maritime businesses on edge.
“This week is completely different than it was last week,” he said.
While news about cruise ships and new health measures are part of that, MacKinnon says the real change came after the International Ice Hockey Federation cancelled the 2020 Women’s World Hockey Championship.
“I don’t want to say it was a wake-up call, but it was maybe a bit surprising. It has changed the tenor of the conversation,” he said.
In a report to Halifax City Council about the event, municipal staff said the tournament would bring about $2.5 million of economic activity into the city.
That includes the approximately 2,000 hotel rooms that would have been booked and all the spending the expected 82,000 attendees would have done.
It’s a significant amount of money injected into the city’s economy, but not so much that its loss is devastating.
“It was going to be kind of a nice bonus to get in our slower time of the year,” explains MacKinnon, but it won’t have a huge impact on most businesses’ bottom lines.
Glen Bowie, the director of sales and catering at Westin Nova Scotia, agrees. In an email, he said the tournament cancellation will likely have only a minor impact on the Westin’s overall business.
“But because there is now going to be limited demand in Halifax, there will be fewer people travelling and we will not pick up as many reservations,” he said. “That said, at this time it is difficult to quantify the loss.”
MacKinnon says the more serious effect of the tournament’s cancellation has been how it has changed the way businesses are thinking about Coronavirus.
“What’s different than last week is that there’s now an expectation that things could change very rapidly,” he says.
New warnings from both the U.S. and Canadian governments telling people not to travel on cruise ships are only adding to those fears.
So far, ports in Saint John, Halifax, and Sydney aren’t seeing cancellations happen. But Becky Knox of the Port of Saint John says that could definitely change.
“With the statements on cruise we’ve seen from the U.S. and Canadian governments this week, there could be fewer folks on the ships arriving in our Port city, but there has been no indication of that to date,” she said in an email.
Lars Osberg is a professor of economics at Dalhousie University. He says that even if cruise ships do bring fewer people than expected into the Maritimes this year the economic impacts won’t be that severe.
He says the government warning will almost certainly keep some people away from cruise ships, and that will mean fewer people arriving on them in Maritime ports. However, he points out that cruise ships specifically aren’t a major part of the region’s overall economy.
“There’s not really a lot of local benefits to having a ship tied up at the wharf and a lot of people get off and run around,” he says.
Yes, lots of tourists disembark and walk the streets, but they usually stick to a very specific area, are on dry land for a very short time, and spend relatively little money in the process, he says.
The real concern, he says, will be if all tourism slows down significantly, something MacKinnon wholeheartedly agrees with.
“I think the bigger concern is, what is this outbreak going to do for the regular businesses? People coming on cruise ships, people coming to visit friends and family. It will actually have a much bigger impact if tourism suddenly drops,” he said.
David Campbell, an economist and president of Jupia Consultants in Moncton, says Coronavirus lingering into the summer will mean far fewer people travelling during peak tourist season and real trouble for the Maritime economy.
“If this thing extends into May and June and it really starts to affect the tourism sector, I think there will be a real, potentially significant economic impact,” he said.