Coaxing tourists key to saving hotels
Alberta’s tourism industry is facing an economic dichotomy, as crammed resorts in the Rockies report having one of their best years while hotels in other parts of the province struggle to simply remain open.
In 2015-16, hotel occupancy rates dropped close to 10 per cent.
The provincial tourism levy brought in $91.5 million, $10.7 million less than in 2014-15. The tourism levy is a four per cent charge tacked onto hotel room rates. The money goes into the general revenue fund.
Even the average room rate decreased, as hotels in smaller cities and rural areas competed in what Alberta Hotel and Lodging Association president Dave Kaiser called a “race to the bottom,” dropping their room prices one after another hoping to attract guests.
“These are very, very difficult times. I haven’t seen numbers this dismal for maybe twentysomething years,” Kaiser said.
Empty hotel rooms can in large part be attributed to the drop in natural resource prices — less gas exploration in rural areas, no oil crews resting their heads, and fewer business and oil company travellers in the major centres.
The decline in demand is compounded by an oversupply of rooms built when the province was booming.
Kaiser said all that combines to threaten closure for some of his association’s members.
Tourism and Culture Minister Ricardo Miranda is aware of the challenges facing the industry and said the drop in revenue is concerning.
But with an increase in both the number of visitors from the U.S. and the number of Canadians staying close to home for vacation this summer, Alberta has a tourism opportunity — if it can draw people to places other than the Rockies.
There’s the potential for a positive story here, Kaiser said, if Alberta can rise to the challenge.
“We haven’t focused on attracting the leisure traveller or tourists as much as we need to now,” he said.
The issue is already on the province’s radar, Miranda said, as Tourism Alberta looks to new markets and government ministries work together to figure out new ways of telling the province’s story.
This summer, Tourism Alberta translated provincial travel literature into French, reaching out to French-speaking nationals who come to Canada, but tend not to head west once they land. As well, it’s conducting a study in Quebec to find out what people there think of Alberta as a tourism destination.
Success lies in coaxing people off the beaten path and getting them to stop somewhere else to spend valuable tourism dollars, by working with First Nations, museums and cultural organizations across the province and tapping into their tourism potential.
“It’s growing those different places that haven’t received a lot of attention,” Miranda said.