In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s tourism industry is facing a crisis larger than the combined effects of September 11, 2001, the SARS outbreak, and the global financial crisis, according to a new report.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s tourism industry is facing a crisis larger than the combined effects of September 11, 2001, the SARS outbreak, and the global financial crisis, according to a new report.

The depth of the crisis means a long rebound for the tourism industry with potential shock waves to other sectors of the economy, says Destination Canada, a Crown company whose mission is to promote domestic tourism. The agency has compiled new data for the report due to be released Monday on an industry connected to one in ten Canadian jobs, according to Destination Canada.

“Tourism affects so many other areas of our quality of life as Canadians,” said Marsha Walden, president and chief executive officer of Destination Canada. “It’s one of those few industries, maybe the only one that can be found in every corner of this country.”

The report adds a new dimension to discussions about the unequal impact of the pandemic across regions and sectors of the Canadian economy, for which previously limited data was available. It also provides information on how much time certain key areas of the Canadian economy take to recover.

Overall, the number of “active” companies – one that operates and has employees – in the industry fell by nine percent between January and November last year. Half a million people in the tourism industry lost their jobs in 2020, Walden said.

Within the tourism sector, travel services saw the largest decrease in active businesses, with 31 percent fewer businesses operating. Rail, landscape and sightseeing transport recorded the second largest decline with a decline of 14.9 percent.

The hotel industry suffered through 2020, with losses concentrated in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, whose downtown hotels had the lowest occupancy rates of any region in Canada. Hotel revenue in these three cities fell 79 percent last year, representing a total loss of $ 2.3 billion across all three cities, the report said.

To compile the data used in the report, Destination Canada conducted original research and relied on information from government and industry reports, Walden said.

The report is also a call to Canadians to redress the damage to the country’s tourism industry by taking domestic vacations as soon as the public health situation improves. If enough Canadians postpone their international travel plans to focus on domestic destinations, it could accelerate the tourism sector’s recovery by up to a year, the report said.

Without a significant change in consumer habits, it would take the industry five years to hit pre-pandemic levels, the report said. However, reallocating two-thirds of the dollars spent on international travel in 2019 to domestic travel would replace the estimated $ 19.4 billion deficit in the industry in 2020 and save more than 150,000 jobs, the report said .

“Canadians have sat at home and saved a lot of money this year, which is good for individuals and not so good for the economy,” said Walden. “We really need them to get out of there and tour the country and spend money all over the country as soon as it’s safe to do so.”

Guidatour, which sells walking tours of downtown Montreal and other areas, is one of the small tourism-dependent companies whose revenues have plummeted over the past year as the usual international tourist base has disappeared. The company’s sales fell 95 percent last year, said company owner Angele Vermette.

Prior to the pandemic, Guidatour employed eight full-time workers and had a network of around 100 tour guides who worked freelance, Vermette said.

Guidatour sometimes arranged more than 100 tours a day, but during the pandemic there were often days when there wasn’t a single one, Vermette said.

“These are passionate people who love their jobs,” said Vermette. “As a tour guide, you don’t do this for your retirement, you don’t do this for pay, you do it because you love history and tourism, you love your city.”

Improving economic activity in Canada’s city centers, where Guidatour mainly operates, will be key to a recovery for the entire tourism sector, according to Walden, as visitors to a region typically travel to a city center first before moving on to other areas.

Vermette said her staff had been working on developing new programs, some of which could also appeal to locals to take advantage of an increase in travel later this year. With the launch of the vaccine, Vermette said she was confident that Guidatour would have more customers this year, but noted that sales will still not come close to what the company saw in 2019.

Similarly, Frontiers North Adventures, a family business that offers tours to Churchill, Man, where visitors can see local attractions like polar bears and beluga whales, has changed its offerings to appeal to Canadians looking to take a domestic vacation this year.

Historically, around 80 percent of the company’s customer base has been overseas travelers who start the tour in Winnipeg before flying to Churchill, said John Gunter, the company’s president. In anticipation of another sluggish year for international travel, the company is adding flights to Churchill direct from Calgary and Montreal in hopes of tapping the domestic adventure market in the north.

“We had to realign our offers in order to be more attractive for the domestic and local audience,” said Gunter. “If we can only rely on Winnipeg, it will be another year of losses.”

This Canadian press report was first published on March 7, 2021.

Jon Victor, the Canadian press

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