Kelowna mayor urges shopping spree to help businesses recoup losses
With smoke clearing for now, Kelowna residents should help out businesses affected by poor air quality.
That’s the message from Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran, who at the end of Monday’s council meeting urged people to shop locally and be a tourist in their own town.
“We know a lot of our businesses have been impacted, some quite substantially,” Basran said.
Kelowna residents should make an extra effort to help out such businesses, Basran said. People should consider visiting local attractions or making their purchases from locally owned enterprises that might have been affected by the smoke-induced downturn in tourism, Basran said.
Tourism Kelowna CEO Lisanne Ballantyne said last week she had heard from many local businesses that had been affected by wildfire smoke.
When smoke began to settle into the valley earlier this month, Tourism Kelowna contacted 90 local hotels and bed and breakfasts to find out how they were being impacted.
“What we’re hearing is the smoke is definitely affecting tourism business, and that worries us,” said Ballantyne.
At least three-quarters of the local hotels reported they had at least one cancelation due to smoke, while more than half said guests shortened their stay once they arrived and saw the smoke.
“Those were numbers that told us we were definitely going to be losing revenue in those important months of July and August,” said Ballantyne.