The impact of COVID-19 on the local tourism industry has been brutal and the early estimates compiled by Tourism Prince George for an April 2 report to stakeholders contained some sobering stats on the repercussions being felt in the city.
$12.7 million in lost revenue.
21,000 hotel room nights lost.
Forty-six cancelled events, including the world women’s curling championships; 19 postponements, including the Canadian masters badminton championships; and seven pending decisions.
Across Canada, with travel restrictions in place, self-isolation being practiced and social interaction discouraged, many hotels and most restaurants have closed. B.C. hotels reported occupancy rates in March dropped to 10 or 15 per cent, well below the 60 or 70 per cent average.
Tourism Prince George CEO Tracey McBride saw similar crippling effects to the service industry in 2003 in the Toronto area while working as a tourism industry leader in the Niagara Falls region during the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak.
From the time the first case was reported in February until it ended in June, there were 438 probable cases and 44 deaths were confirmed. Most of the infections in Canada were confined to southern Ontario and occurred in hospitals with elderly patients, immuno-compromised patents and health-care workers accounting for most of the cases.
A second wave of infections came after the World Health Organization lifted a one-week travel advisory for non-essential travel to Toronto. The four-month epidemic cost the Canadian economy an estimated $4 billion and 28,000 jobs were lost.
“Anything that impacted Toronto also affected Niagara because we were only two hours apart,” said McBride. “I just know that putting out the first efforts of marketing there was not a lot of return on investment. What impacted more was utilizing different promotional strategies. I know they filmed the Conan O’Brien show in Toronto and had celebrities like Will Farrell walking the streets in Toronto and connecting with people that way seemed to have more of an impact.
“I set up a Niagara Loves Toronto tour and we boarded a bus with tourism industry professionals and citizens and when we were given the go-ahead to travel, people still weren’t traveling. So we went and ate in Chinatown and went on Mariposa cruises and went to the CN Tower. There was still international media going, ‘What are you doing?’ People were still a little shy until they saw people doing it.
“The final (travel) warning was lifted in June and it didn’t finally recover until October, the first month of growth in (airport) arrivals since the SARS outbreak.”
McBride says some of the lessons learned that year which helped hotels, restaurants and tourist-dependent businesses recover from the SARS disaster can also be applied to the post COVID-19 world. While it took three years for consumer confidence to fully rebound after SARS, the United Nations World Tourism Organization estimates it could take between five and seven years to return to pre-COVID-19 levels.
“It took about three months to see a spike after the (SARS travel) ban was lifted - we’re in a very unprecedented situation with COVID and we don’t know when that is going to be,” she said. “They have been anticipating we will see more containment measures until the end of June.
“My gut feeling is, even if people are going to travel, it will be to visit friends and relatives because you’ve been shuttered away. We’ve got to be cognizant that people may also not have a lot of money and everybody’s going to go after the domestic market.
“You really have to do have to understand the intentions and do that research. What do the travel intentions tell us? How far are people willing to go? I think it’s important that the north as a whole pulls together. It really is going to be up in the air until we see how people feel and if they’ve got the dollars to travel.”
Tourism PG has postponed all its marketing campaigns and is considering shifting its focus to domestic travel to lure more regional visitors once the COVID-19 threat subsides. Through regular online meetings, the organization plans to work with the city, Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Prince George, Community Futures Fraser Fort George, Northern B.C. Tourism, UNBC, College of New Caledonia, local media and industry partners to come up with a marketing strategy which will likely target other northern communities in B.C. and Alberta.
McBride says it’s too early to tell what the lasting effects of social distancing will be on tourism and how long it will be before people are comfortable again being in crowds.
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light some of the good-news stories such as local hotel owners who have stepped up to help people who needed self-isolate. The Carmel Inn offered some of its rooms to residents of downtown boarding houses and is delivering them their groceries. Stories like that instill pride and shows the city has a big heart and McBride plans to use those examples as part of the city’s collective tourism marketing strategy.
“When residents have a lot of pride it makes it even a stronger community that people want to visit because they’ve seen it in the news already,” she said. “The locals will be able to kind of brag to their relatives when they see all those great stories and they’ll be like, ‘you need to come and visit, this is a community that cares.’
“Looking at what did work after 9/11 and SARS and all those things, it was more the outpouring of the media stories and the good deeds and wanting to support our fellow human beings that drove that recovery visitation than traditional marketing.”
