Will `digital nomads' return to Vancouver?
Surge in travelling workers post-virus possible
Sabrina Chammas-Doumet's co-working space in Gastown saw enough business from so-called digital nomads travelling through Vancouver before the COVID19 pandemic that she isn't going to give up on the struggling business, betting on what might come once it's over.
“I'm trying to hold on because I do believe that it will pick up again, if I just stay put,” said Chammas-Doumet, who has run L'Atelier, a 3,000foot space, since 2016.
Travellers are grounded for now, and office workers remain mostly sequestered at home, so Chammas-Doumet estimates L'Atelier is currently operating at about 40 per cent of usual revenue, helped out by the virtual mailbox services it offers members.
However, she is betting that the awareness among many white-collar workers — who've been pushed out of their offices for safety's sake — that they can work pretty much anywhere, will make for better business, especially in a place like Vancouver.
“I feel like (Vancouver) attracts a lot of digital nomads in the summer, because of the beauty of the city and all the nature activities that people can do,”
Chammas-Doumet said.
Despite the pandemic, Vancouver still shows up on the promotional website Nomadist.com as a popular destination, thought not at the top of its landing page.
The firm behind a webbased resume assistant resume.io, however, boldly declared Vancouver the “digital nomad capital of the world,” but based only on the number of Instagram photos hash-tagged #digitalnomad that originated in the city.
And based on the premise that freelance occupations are on the rise, resume.io posed the question of “where might these new nomads roam,” presuming that their freedom to do so will return soon.
However, it does stand to reason that the pandemic's mass discovery that a lot of jobs don't need to be tied to a specific location creates potential for the trend to carry on, according to Simon Fraser University innovation academic Terri Griffith.
“I don't think organizations can unlearn the fact that they could to it,” said Griffith.
“They can't say `oh, well, you can't do that at home anymore,' because we know that's not true. And people for themselves figure out how it fits for them.”
Griffith said it is a trend that has grown out of more digitally oriented occupations with employers that don't exactly have physical locations themselves.
She recalled corresponding with a former student employed by the firm that owns a prominent content platform, but was doing so from Italy.
“I said, `why are you working out of Milan,' and she goes `why aren't you?' ” Griffith added, which neatly summed up the nomad mindset.
Now anchored in Victoria, Steffani Cameron is a bonafide former full-blown nomad who travelled through 25 countries between 2015 and 2019 and doesn't doubt Vancouver will remain popular.
“People have been really on the game with promoting themselves through social media in Vancouver for a really long time,” said the longtime blogger, freelancer and film-industry remote worker. “We just have a legacy that way.”
True nomads, Cameron said, are people who have given up a physical address in their home countries, which means “taking on a lot of risk, (because) it puts you at the mercy of whatever country, whatever climate you're in.”