‘Patience & resilience’
REGIONAL VISITORS ARE CUSHIONING SOME OF THE BLOW TO BANFF’S ECONOMY, BUT MORE IS NEEDED TO KEEP THE BUSINESSES THAT LIVE AND DIE ON TOURISM GOING, AS OLIVIA CONDON AND JASON HERRING EXPLAIN FROM CALGARY.
POSTMEDIA IS TAKING AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE SOCIAL, INSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES THE PANDEMIC HAS BROUGHT TO LIGHT — AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, HOW WE CAN SOLVE THEM.
Abeautiful midapril afternoon in Banff would typically see bustling street-front businesses and packed restaurants.
But on this day, the town remained quiet. Stephane Prevost sat outside one of his two Caribou Street restaurants in the Alberta tourism hot spot while inside a skeleton back-end staff filled a rare takeout order.
On April 6, the Alberta government announced another round of restrictions on businesses and public life amid a third wave of COVID-19 infections.
“We didn’t do very well yesterday; we sold maybe a dozen orders. Obviously that doesn’t cut it, to not even break even,” said Prevost, chef and managing partner at the Block Kitchen + Bar and Shoku Izakaya restaurants in Banff.
“All of us in the industry, we want to do the right thing, we want to be able to conform and help minimize the spread and help fight the virus. But all the things right now, they’re coming together and funnelling down. It’s another test of the patience and resilience of people.”
As a hospitality hub and vacation destination, Banff and its surrounding Rocky Mountain communities were hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic that kept travellers at home — or stuck on the other side of an international border.
“It would be fair to say that no one saw this coming,” said Darren Reeder, executive director of the Banff and Lake Louise Hospitality Association. “When it did, it was like a tsunami.”
Roughly 85 per cent of the town’s diverse and primarily foreign-born workforce was laid off in March 2020 during the first wave of restrictions.
Reeder said Banff and Lake Louise were among the hardest-hit communities in Canada’s tourism sector.
“The only people coming into our community live outside and are coming here to visit, so there are very few other communities that would be impacted to the same degree,” he said.
In communities where the economy lives or dies by the tourism industry, losing international visitors has been the most difficult aspect of the pandemic.
In a normal year, international travellers make up roughly 50 per cent of visitors to the national park. Data for Summer 2020 shows visitation was only down 16 per cent from 2019, but Reeder said that’s a difficult metric to measure success by, since most of those visitors came from communities close to Banff and thus spent fewer dollars.
“Albertans on average, per trip, spend about $157. If you look at Canadians coming into Alberta, they will spend on average $400 per trip. When you get to an overseas visitor, they spend approximately $1,100 per trip,” he said. “People will say, ‘Banff is still as busy as it was and (nearby Kananaskis) visitation increased exponentially last year.’ But visitation does not, in real numbers, equate economic viability.”
The resulting economic uncertainty has many businesses wondering whether they’ll still have enough money in the bank to remain open after the third wave.
Leslie Bruce, president and CEO of Banff and Lake Louise Tourism (BLLT), said she’s optimistic visitation will be up from last year, with or without international travellers, but there’s a lot riding on the summer months for the organization’s 800 members.
“Our businesses count on summer to the extent that 55 to 60 per cent of revenue for accommodation businesses comes in the four months between June and September,” she said.
“If you look at entertainment, activities and transportation, some of those businesses are relying on summer for anywhere from 90 to 100 per cent of their revenue.”
Working closely with the Banff and Lake Louise Hospitality Association, BLLT has been offering supports to businesses in the region since Day 1. A new campaign focusing on mental health looks to pull from resources that exist in the community.
“We know from a recent survey that well over 70 per cent of the employer constituency and the workers that work for them have said they have been deeply affected and are struggling with their mental health,” Reeder said. “It’s exacerbated because we’ve got 50 different cultures and languages trying to struggle through and manage in a community that would normally be able to support people.”
For Banff restaurants, last summer brought some relief from the pandemic, as the town closed two downtown roads to allow for outdoor space for patios and pedestrian-only traffic. Council reopened its budget to cut the overall tax levy by 17 per cent and offered deferral programs for taxes and utilities.
“Sales were down by at least 30 per cent, but it was still something that was manageable for us,” said Prevost.
Businesses that pushed for an earlier start to the pedestrian and outdoor patio project along Banff Ave. were pleased on April 19 as Banff council agreed to move their timeline up nearly six weeks to begin on April 30.
“The businesses which were in a position to benefit from the opportunity (last summer) loved it, but not all residents and not all businesses did,” Banff ’s decade-long Mayor Karen Sorensen said.
Though she’s optimistic for this season, the town’s economy can only hold out for so long. “Last summer we saw an awful lot of Albertans and western Canadians in Banff, albeit mostly day visitors. Respectfully, that doesn’t sustain our economy in the long run.”
Compounding business problems in Banff was a surge in COVID-19 infections during the second and third waves that made the region one of Alberta’s viral hot spots. As of April 19, there were 138 active cases in the Banff area, putting the region among the highest in the province for number of cases per 100,000 residents.
The idyllic Fairmont Banff Springs was one site to log an outbreak in the second wave, something hotel general manager Gregor Resch said was driven by off-site gatherings.
“Because of the closeness of our community, where a lot of people hang out outside work and go skiing together, of course it happens very quickly,” he said.
Hotels saw a significant hit from the lack of international travellers. Resch said about half of all pre-pandemic bookings were from out of the country.
This summer, the Fairmont plans to only return to about 60 per cent capacity, if allowed to do so. Resch said it’ll be 2022 before the hotel can reasonably expect a return to pre-pandemic operations.
Significant restrictions on gatherings also had an outsized impact on the event planning sector, according to Jeff and Naomi Langer-mcintosh, co-owners of Mountain Events in Banff since 2004.
When the pandemic hit, they had to postpone or cancel nearly all their bookings, including corporate events that have yet to return. Some smaller wedding ceremonies continue, capped by the province’s 10-person gathering limit, but the revenue pales in comparison to a normal year.
“Really, we missed out on two booking years for rentals, largely weddings (and) corporate,” Jeff Langer-mcintosh said. “We don’t have anything in reserve. It’s all been spent to get us this far.”
Federal and provincial subsidies have been fundamental in supporting the industry in Banff, but Reeder said the current timeline is insufficient.
“The one thing we’re really asking for now, that’s more desperate than ever, is that the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program be extended to the end of December,” he said. “We need that program available, otherwise our ability to hold our workforces in place will be difficult.”
Prevost is struggling to access supports for Shoku Izakaya. As a business that opened following the first wave, it is ineligible for the subsidies keeping others above water.
He said business owners should not be disincentivized from starting new businesses that will be central to paving the road to recovery once restrictions are lifted.
“These new projects (and) new businesses should be supported by the federal government as well; not just the ones that were pre-existing.”
Though the optimism is palpable, overcoming the pandemic is imperative to the success of the mountain community’s economy.
“I do have a high degree of optimism as long as we’re able to welcome people back and, frankly, that people can move more freely than they have been able to,” Bruce said. “We’re grateful for our regional visitors, but it’s not going to be enough to save summer for some of these businesses.”