Heavy and persistent rain hasn't put a damper on the number of tourists visiting Prince George.
The number of tourists stopping at the city's visitor centre was up 31 per cent in May and five per cent in June over last year. Over the two months, a total of 6,093 people stopped at the centre, Tourism Prince George CEO Aidan Kelly said.
"The weather in of itself hasn't had an impact. A lot of the tourism in the summer is longer, preplanned trips," Kelly said. "So there may be a small dip in regional tourism... but the number of visitors at our visitor centre is up."
The centre is seeing heavier traffic of Swiss, Australian and German tourists than in previous years, he added.
Road closures on Highway 97 near Mackenzie Junction and Highway 16 77 kilometres east of Prince George due to washouts had a bigger, but short-term, effect on travelers, he said.
"At first, when the road closure happened, for a few days it had a positive effect on visitors because people couldn't get through. We really did help a lot of people," Kelly said. "We gave them information on how they could still get where they are going, or how they could extend their stay in Prince George a few days."
However, once the delays and closures started to drag on, RV travelers in particular began to detour around the city, he said.
Northern B.C. Tourism Association CEO Anthony Everett said the same trend has been seen throughout the region.
"I know some of the businesses in Prince George, in that 10-day period [of road closures], had some cancelations," Everett said. "[But] the weather doesn't seem to have had an effect on the number of visitors."
Visitors to Northern B.C. are generally looking for an "adventure tourism," experience and are less -likely to be deterred by bad weather, he added.
