Planning for the unknown
Accomodations sector looks for vaccine light at end of pandemic tunnel
Tourism industry officials are keeping a close eye on COVID-19 developments and planning for an uncertain summer season that is only months away.
Darlene Grant Fiander, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, said that province's tourism industry success is largely going to depend on how the COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out. In mid-December, the first doses of the vaccine were distributed in Canada to health-care professionals and residents of long-term care homes.
Grant Fiander said the tourism industry in Nova Scotia lost $1.7 billion in 2020. In 2019, tourism in Nova Scotia generated $2.6 billion in revenue, but the expectation for 2020 was only about $900 million.
"Tourism is at the centre of this pandemic, and I believe that when tourism starts to thrive again, the economy will get back to where it needs to be," she said.
Grant Fiander estimates the economy won't get back to 2019 levels for another three to four years, even with the vaccine phased in. A change that needs to happen is that the province's tourism industry has to start thinking about itself as a year-round activity and not merely focused on the summer months. It also needs to continue to show the rest of Canada that the region is a safe destination — that is assuming the rest of the country opens up for tourism travel in 2021, she said.
"It's going to take a while for people to feel confident. And, for a long time, I believe we're going to rely on the domestic market," she said.
"So, the quality of our product is going to be really important (and) how we tell our story."
Grant Fiander said businesses in the tourism industry need to be more innovative.
One thing she learned about the 2020 season is that a lot weren't prepared to pivot to an online environment and use technology to market itself.
ROOM NIGHTS
A sector that has been hit particularly hard is accommodations. According to Tourism Nova Scotia, 955,000 room nights were sold in the province in 2020 as of September — a year-todate decrease of 56 per cent compared to 2019. Similar declines were reported in Halifax (58 per cent) and Cape Breton (59 per cent). Not surprisingly, with Atlantic Canada in a bubble in September, non-resident visits were down 71 per cent compared to September 2019, while 81 per cent of visitors were from Atlantic Canada.
In October, Newfoundland and Labrador had a year-todate decline of non-resident visitors in automobiles (63 per cent) and by air travel (80 per cent) compared to 2019. Room nights sold were also down by 57 per cent, and the year-to-date revenue from room nights sold – $63.7 million – was down 63 per cent compared to 2019.
In P.E.I., as of September, room nights sold were down 66 per cent for the year. Confederation Bridge traffic (year-to-date) was down 54 per cent compared to 2019. In July alone, bridge traffic, even with the Atlantic bubble in place, was down 60 per cent, but it improved in August with a 40 per cent decrease compared to 2019. Air travel to the Island has been down more than 90 per cent each month since April.
The Mill River Resort and golf course is located near Bloomfield, an hour's drive from the Confederation Bridge. Given its location, the resort is a tourist destination popular for weddings, conventions and corporate events. In 2020, many of those were either cancelled or rescheduled to 2021. The resort, which is owned by P.E.I.-born Don McDougall is open year-round, and despite a slow start in the summer, occupancy numbers rebounded in the fall to be only down by 10 per cent compared to 2019. Even so, revenues were down 40 to 50 per cent.
TEE TIMES
The one bright spot this summer and fall was golf, which saw an increase in memberships by 20 per cent and rounds played by 15 per cent. Geoffrey Irving, president of Mill River, said the increase was largely due to junior golfers, locals and former members coming back.
"We seem to have a lot of people who were members once upon a time, and whether it was because they were now working less or working from home, they seem to have that extra time to play."
For Nova Scotia's tourism businesses, Grant Fiander is asking the Nova Scotia government to look at its commercial taxation practices to better reflect current circumstances. She explained that commercial taxes are based on revenues from two years ago. At that time, business was good, but those numbers don't reflect current realities. And two years from now, revenues today won't likely be in line with today's revenues and assessments.
"So, they're charging people high assessments in a year when they have no revenue. You've just got to deal with it because in two year's time, when they're looking at this year, they're certainly going to be dealing with it," she said.
Mill River is optimistic about the future, especially since 2021 is the golf course's 50th anniversary. But financial planning for this year has its challenges.
"Our planning process now isn't quite as straightforward as it had been in the past. We're having to adapt constantly," Irving said. "You need a crystal ball and a bit of 'throwing spaghetti at the wall' now, but when we look at what's happened in 2019, what happened in our summer and fall in 2020, we use that to do our best guess about what's going to happen in 2021."