Lower prices, clever marketing breathe new li fe into off - season
Empty nesters with fl exible schedules expand industry opportunities
Gone are the days when tourism operators in B. C. referred to the peak season as “the hundred days of summer.” That was the golden period from about mid- June to mid- September when tourists crammed into hotels, restaurants and attractions, then fled home, leaving them deserted.
Now, thanks to the dawning of the digital age, the advancing of baby boomers into the child- free retirement era, sophisticated marketing and the increasing complexity of travel, the peak- and off- seasons, while they still exist, aren’t as clearly defined as they once were.
On either side of that peak season are shoulder seasons that are growing ever wider.
And even within peak and offseasons, there are peaks and valleys, with tourism operators able to change rates with the click of a mouse as they react to supply and demand. Price point matters more in the off- season than in the peak season when tourists are willing to pay top dollar for the travelling experience.
The timing and extent of the bargains also vary across the province. Ian Powell, general manager of the Inn at Laurel Point in Victoria , said the upward shift in rates in the provincial capital begins the May long weekend and then drops around Thanksgiving.
The difference in the price of a hotel room can be $ 100 a night or even $ 150 if it’s a more expensive room that commands $ 300 in peak season.
Even with the lower rates, hotel occupancy hovers around 50 per cent in the off- season and can dip to 25 per cent in January, said Powell. Managers have had to learn to cater to two different markets , with more locals trickling in during winter and international tourists flooding in during summer.
That can mean changes, for example, in menus with simple comfort foods like mac and cheese and pot pie in the winter and fresh fish or fancy surf and turf dishes in summer. Catering to bargain hunters, the off- season menu is cheaper by as much as 25 per cent.
Even in the off- season in Victoria, given its high proportion of retirees, there is a spike around Christmas when prices are hiked slightly for visitors who generally are coming to visit an aging parent.
“We actually make a big deal out of Christmas,” said Powell. “Even the gardens in the winter at Christmastime in Victoria are incredibly decorated. What we do is so quaint. We are not Vancouver. It’s not big and glitzy. People come here and say how it reminds them of Christmas when they were kids. It’s nostalgic.”
Powell said Victoria is experiencing the same phenomenon as other North American cities: “people are travelling more in those time periods that we haven’t seen before.”
As a result, “we are starting to see the shoulders move, which is a good sign.”
He attributes this to the retirement of baby boomers, who have more flexibility in terms of when they can travel and more money than their parents had.
This often means two holidays a year instead of one, which might mean one in May and one in September.
“Don’t call it a boom yet, but we are starting to feel that movement,” said Powell.
Perhaps there is no better place to demonstrate the shifting sands of tourism in B. C. than Tofino.
Charles McDiarmid, who grew up in Tofino and is now managing director of the Wickaninnish Inn, recalled a time before the 1970s when people visited almost exclusively in July and August to camp or stay in very inexpensive beach cottages.
“Once the Labour Day weekend was over, boom, that was the end of the season.”
Now the once- remote destination on the western side of the island operates year- round as a resort. The Wickaninnish Inn opened in 1996, presenting a whole new reason for coming here: storm watching during the winter months.
The brain wave came to McDiarmid from his own family experience of being nestled safely in a cabin just past the inn. They used to gather there during holidays like Christmas and New Year’s, hoping for a big storm to blow in so they could venture out into the mayhem on the beach and then retreat in front of a roaring fire. Drawing on these experiences, he drew up a business plan for the inn, put the financing together, then moved back to Tofino to help manage the construction. Once that was done, he took off his hard hat and replaced it with a nice shirt to manage it.
With all these reasons to come here, rates in the hotel fluctuate from a base of about $ 500 per night in the peak summer months to $ 300 during the winter storm season, with the spring shoulder season commanding $ 320 mid- week and the October rate being slightly higher at $ 350.
It’s become the resort that never sleeps.
Thompson- Okanagan
Like Tofino and Victoria, the Thompson- Okanagan is seeing growth in its shoulder seasons, said Ingrid Jarrett, general manager and vice- president of business development at the Watermark Beach Resort in Osoyoos.
However, given the unique tourism climate in this inland area, the demarcation of high and low seasons has its own peculiarities.
Jarrett said the area has three tourism seasons — the high season, which starts around the third week of June and runs through the end of the first week of September, and two shoulder seasons, the first being September and October and the second being April, May and June. The offseason runs from the beginning of November to the end of March.
Rates in the off- season are roughly half what they are in the summer, said Jarrett, and the length of stay is about half.
As almost everywhere, though, the boundaries are shifting.
Given an emerging tourism sector around wine, food and agri- tourism, the Thompson-Okanagan region has seen more private investment in resort hotels than any other region in the province, said Jarrett.
Osoyoos, being Canada’s only desert, is its own little oasis in this scrambled picture. It tripled its off- season snowbird business last year from the year before by targeting the prairie provinces with their deepfreeze winter conditions.
Airlines
If you are looking for cheap flights out of the country, peak, shoulder and off- seasons don’t exist to the same extent as in the hotel industry because airlines can easily move planes around, sending them to Europe in the summer and south in the winter in response to consumer demand. But there are still bargains to be had. The airlines advise people to book early as prices tend to rise as seats sell out. Allison Wallace, director of media and communications at Flight Centre Canada, named London, England and Sydney, Australia, as examples of places where there are major fluctuations in prices between high and low season.
Like other areas, Vancouver has a peak summer season bracketed by spring and fall shoulder seasons with prices changing accordingly, said Stephen Pearce, Tourism Vancouver’s vice- president of leisure travel and digital marketing.
As a marketing tool, Tourism Vancouver is looking at partnership deals with other destinations like Whistler, Victoria, the Okanagan and even Banff and Toronto.
When people are travelling
Price is a consideration, but what’s attracting them is the fact that we have become interesting, we’ve become sexy, we’ve become a destination that they are starting to pay attention to. STEPHEN PEARCE TOURISM VANCOUVER
from afar, they are often looking to combine several regional or even national experiences, he pointed out.
“We can sometimes encourage them to look at non- traditional periods when they might be looking at a Vancouver and a Whistler experience or a Vancouver and Seattle experience.”
A general drop in tourism prices can be a good thing in the low season but for the most part, it only works to target potential visitors who live nearby — like in Seattle, for example — and generally only works in the very short term, said Pearce.
It can also have pitfalls. “You have to be very careful about using price in your long- haul markets because you are positioning yourself as an inexpensive destination, which is perhaps not where you want to be,” he said. “You want to focus on value. You don’t want to focus on price as being the overall consideration.”
“What is attracting them here isn’t price. Price is a consideration, but what’s attracting them is the fact that we have become interesting, we’ve become sexy, we’ve become a destination that they are starting to pay attention to.”
Perhaps the most dramatic shift in terms of seasonal travel has taken place in Whistler, which was once pretty dead in the summer. Now the alpine resort has both a peak winter and summer season because of the popularity of the bike park, a plethora of festivals, pristine lakes and word getting out that the place buzzes in summer as well as winter.
So peak and off seasons have become as muted as the hint of winter in a fall breeze or the pastel colours in a spring dawn, but they are still there in some form.