“We’re already listening to individuals query whether or not it’s summer time to come back (to the Okanagan),” Ballingall mentioned. “You’ll be able to by no means out-market the information.”
Canada’s PR difficulty with the wildfires
Marsha Walden, CEO of tourism advertising and marketing Crown company Vacation spot Canada, mentioned final 12 months’s headline-grabbing fireplace season—in addition to the fires at present raging in Western Canada—have an effect on individuals’s notion of this nation. However she mentioned her group’s personal analysis exhibits just one in 10 potential guests to Canada will contemplate fully cancelling a visit attributable to wildfire exercise.
“Most will alter their itinerary or their timing,” she mentioned. “So now we have seen short-term dips in visitation… however individuals nonetheless wish to take their vacation.”
Stavros Karlos, with the Tourism Trade Affiliation of Alberta, mentioned rising incidences of wildfire and smoke throughout the nation are an enormous concern to the sector as a complete.
He mentioned it’s necessary that tourism companies have entry to up-to-the-minute, correct details about wildfire exercise and air high quality in order that they will cancel occasions, change their hours, or transfer actions indoors if obligatory.
“In some instances, operators could have the chance to nonetheless present an expertise, albeit considerably modified,” Karlos mentioned. Whereas a closing tally hasn’t been accomplished, final summer time’s wildfires probably price B.C.’s Okanagan area hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in misplaced tourism revenues, mentioned Ellen Walker-Matthews, CEO of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Affiliation.
What makes wildfire so difficult from a planning perspective is its sporadic nature, Walker-Matthews mentioned. Smoke, for instance, can shift quickly on altering winds, affecting one neighborhood in the future and one 1,000 kilometres away the following.
“We’re simply attempting to actually promote what now we have and be sure that individuals know what the real-time, precise scenario is,” mentioned Walker-Matthews, including the lengthy weekend climate forecast for the Okanagan this 12 months is “stunning… spectacular” with no fireplace exercise in sight. ”There’s numerous issues to see and do, and I feel so long as we simply talk out the details precisely, we’ll see tourism proceed to be sturdy.”
