Tourist “spotting” now a nationwide phenomenon

Tourism operators wondering how the 2008 season may be shaping up may have seen the reports below from the CBC and The Canadian Press. 

The reports show that the March 2008 figures for foreign visitors to Canada are 12.4% lower than a year ago.

While visitors from the US make up a large proportion of this decline, there are declining numbers from Germany,  but gains from Italy and the Netherlands. The number of overseas visits to Canada fell by 3 per cent in March 2008 to 384,000.

With one in ten jobs related to the tourism sector in Canada, the tourism figures are beginning to make national headlines. Operators, on the other hand, have experienced the challenges of doing business in an ever increasingly competitive market ever since 9/11. 

“Tourist spotting,” rather like bird spotting, has been a local phenomenon in small coastal communities, like Canso in Nova Scotia, for some time. This sport is now apparently becoming a national phenomenon as gas prices and our exchange rate relative to European currencies and to the US dollar have changed foreign visitors’ perception of their purchasing power.

After SARS, Toronto’s tourism sector was decimated. With that hardened 20-20 vision of the SARS experience, Toronto has re-emerged as an industry leader in the tourism sector, positioning itself at the luxury end of the spectrum and being unabashed that their hotel rates now have the eighth highest ADR (average daily rate) worldwide.

In Nova Scotia, our learning curve may be a little flatter. Operators are confronted with the anomaly of having to position themselves between two much more divergent markets than Toronto experiences, the domestic and the foreign.

Despite the tourism research findings that pricing is apparently the fifth or sixth consideration in selecting a tourism destination, experienced market researchers in other industries make allowances for the mismatch between what consumers say they do and what they actually do.

So although people may answer a questionnaire with answers that indicate that a number of other factors are more important than price, when it actually comes to making their reservations, price may suddenly take a flying leap towards the top of the list.

This discrepancy is much more likely to have a direct impact on the domestic than on the foreign market: the domestic market is essentially a fixed entity while the foreign market comprises a constantly changing profile of various countries depending on their relative economic success in any given year.

The domestic market may just turn out to be a whole lot more price sensitive than we have been led to believe it is, just at a time when the tourism marketing mantra is “go luxury, go niche.’

The “propensity to spend,” issue is also a little more nuanced. While the propensity to spend may depend more on the visitor’s experiential rating than on the visitor’s gross income, it does assume that you have already managed to lure the visitor to your destination.

 

Referenced articles:

CBC – The number of foreign visitors to Canada in March was the lowest since record-keeping began in 1972, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

About 2.26 million visits to this country were recorded that month, down 12.6 per cent from the same month a year earlier.

A big drop in American visitors was behind the decline. Only 730,000 same-day car trips were made by U.S. motorists in March. That was down 2.5 per cent from the month before and a 24 per cent plunge from a year ago as the price of gas, a high Canadian dollar and a weak U.S. economy kept Americans close to home.

The number of overseas visits fell by 3 per cent to 384,000.

“Travel declined in eight of Canada’s top 12 overseas markets, with the strongest decreases in travel from Mexico, Germany and Hong Kong,” said Statistics Canada.

Canadians, on the other hand, were showing no reluctance to travel, as the number of out-of-country trips rose in every category.

Canadians made 2.1 million same-day car trips to the U.S. in March, up 1.5 per cent from February and an increase of 9.5 per cent from year-ago levels.

The total number of trips to the U.S. rose to 3.8 million.

 ”The level of Canadian travel to the United States observed in the past six months has been the highest since 1998,” Statistics Canada reported.

 Overnight plane trips to the U.S. hit a new record high for the fourth month in a row.

 Travel by Canadians to countries other than the U.S. also hit a record high

 

The Canadian Press – OTTAWA – Travel to Canada hit a record low for the fifth straight month in March, following big declines in both same-day car trips from the United States and the number of visitors from overseas nations.

Statistics Canada reports foreign visitors made 2.3 million trips to Canada in March, the lowest since record keeping started in 1972.

That’s a one per cent decline from February, and a 12.4 per cent drop from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the number of Canadian trips abroad rose 1.4 per cent to almost 4.5 million, the vast majority (85 per cent) to the United States.

U.S. residents made only 730,000 same-day car trips to Canada in March, down 2.5 per cent from the previous month.

Same-day car travel to Canada has fallen by 41.1 per cent in two years.

Overseas travellers to Canada made 384,000 trips in March, down three per cent.

Travel declined in eight of Canada’s top 12 overseas markets, with the strongest decreases in travel from Mexico, Germany and Hong Kong.

There were gains in visitors from India, Italy and the Netherlands.

Overall, Canadians made 3.8 million trips to the United States in March, up 1.6 per cent from February. Canadian travel to the United States in the past six months has been the highest since 1998.

Same-day car travel to the United States increased 1.5 per cent to 2.1 million trips, while overnight car travel rose 1.9 per cent to 991,000 trips.

Overnight plane trips to the United States set a new record high for the fourth straight month.

Canadian travel to countries other than the United States increased 0.4 per cent to a record 670,000 – the 10th month in the past year in which a new record high was set.

Stan Rogers Folk Festival- a pilgrimage of sorts.

This year the Stan Rogers Folk Festival is being held on July 4th, 5th and 6th July 2008. 

This is a week-end to really experience the Atlantic music culture as well as to discover some surprising new music from various parts of the world. It is a smorgasborg of music from folk to jazz and everything in between. This year is the eleventh year the festival has been running.

 The Stan Rogers Folk Festival is now for many people a well established pilgrimage that transforms Canso from a small town to one which hosts thousands of visitors. Rain or shine, snow or hail the music plays on.

Explore Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore

One of the best ways to Explore the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia is to meander along the coastal road without worrying too much about getting to your destination. It is after all, all about the journey! So pack a few things and take a thermos of freshly ground organic coffee and some freshly baked muffins and head down Hwy 7 to the Eastern Shore for a road trip.

One of the remarkable things about this coastal road is just how much of it runs along the shoreline giving you expansive ocean views. It is a meandering road that twists and turns around the inlets, bays and coves of the rocky shoreline. Sparsely populated along the route, it is a road less travelled for the most part but one that remains hauntingly beautiful. With a little sign posting it would be easier to navigate but alas that is not the case and we are inclined to use technology to its best advantage to help navigate the shoreline. So we are going to give you ten good reasons why you should take a trip down the Eastern Shore road to Canso, with our blog.

 

1. The drive affords fabulous ocean views.
2. There are some of Nova scotia’s best places to stay and eat along the Eastern Shore, from casual to fine dining, as well as numerous places where you can stop and buy fresh clams and mussels and the occasional lobster pound as well. The shore also has two excellent smokehouses, one in Tangier, (Willy Krauch’s) and one in Sherbrooke, (St. Mary’s River Smokehouse) where you can purchase the gourmet items for your picnic or if you have a portable refridgerator you can fill it up with delectable items.
3. For kayakers there are numerous protected inlets and bays along the Eastern Shore. Coastal adventures at Tangier is one of the Nova Scotia’s leading kayak outfitters and provides training, paddling excursions, and kayak rentals. There are several other fabulour kayaking spots from Liscombe, Whitehead, Little Dover, Canso, Fox Island Main, to Guysborough. In fact the shoreline is something of a best kept secret for kayakers.