'Most of the city is evacuating': Gridlock on Alberta highway after evacuation order in Fort McMurray
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Canada Day has kicked off the unofficial start of summer, and the tourism sector is hopeful the first season in three years largely free of COVID-19 restrictions will marshal a much-needed boost for a pandemic-stricken industry.
It has been slow to bounce back as new COVID-19 variants and public health measures deterred domestic and foreign travellers, but as cases drop and restrictions lift there are signs of recovery across the country.
Some tour operators are scrambling to find staff to fill a surge in demand and hotels are reporting occupancy rates near pre-pandemic levels.
"This summer will be the summer of recovery," said Catherine Callary, vice president with Tourism Ottawa.
Canada's tourism industry GDP was down nearly 50 per cent in 2020, according to Statistics Canada, compared to an economy-wide 5.4 per cent drop.
And while there is optimism, the most recent Statistics Canada numbers show the recovery is far from complete.
Domestic tourism activity, which compiles data such as travel movement and spending, was down 20 per cent this March compared to 2019. And international tourism activity was 57 per cent behind pre-pandemic levels.
Callary estimates Ottawa lost out on $3 billion in the tourism industry over the pandemic. The demand for hotel rooms, however, has bounced back and now sits around 15 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, she said.
"Tourism operators are not going to be able to recoup the lost revenues from the past two years. Those are not revenues that they can recoup. But we can move forward, we can recover," she said.
Off the coast of Newfoundland, whale watching boats loaded with tourists are back in Atlantic waters. Mike Gatherall, director of Gatherall's Puffin and Whale Watch south of St. John's, said business is booming.
The 38-year-old family business had a banner year in 2019, Gatherall said. But 2022 is exceeding those numbers.
Bookings are up nearly 40 per cent, he said.
"(This year) so far, has actually been quite busy. A very healthy rebound, certainly, for our operation," he said.
Government support and some prudent financial planning helped the business retain its staff throughout the pandemic, Gatherall said. But challenges still remain.
The rising cost of fuel is making it more expensive to operate the boats. And he says a shortage of rental cars could make it hard for would-be customers to make the trip from the city to the rural coast.
In the Toronto-area, hotel occupancy surpassed 80 per cent in June for the first since the pandemic started, said Destination Toronto executive vice-president Andrew Weir.
While leisure travel is expected to drive this summer's recovery, he said it could be years before the city sees the full return of large-scale conferences. Those events are a big boost to local business, whether it's florists, caterers, or audio-visual companies, Weir said.
"Until both of those engines are firing at full steam, the visitor economy won't have fully recovered," he said.
Longtime Toronto walking tour guide Jason Kucherawy said his company, Tour Guys, was inundated with requests in April from local school groups arranging field trips for May and June.
He had to turn down some requests this spring as he scrambled to find guides, after the business had scaled back to a skeleton operation during the pandemic.
The company ran tours in Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto for 15,000 people in 2019, a record year for the 14-year-old company. By 2021, just 500 people attended a tour.
But so far 1,000 people have joined a tour this May and June alone, he said.
"And we're just getting into our peak tourism season. So I know that looking ahead, we've got a lot of bookings now for July and August, as people are planning their trips to Canada. And most of our business, for us, it's Americans. That's three-quarters of our business," said Kucherawy, who serves as president of the Tourist Guide Association of Toronto.
U.S. residents took 759,600 trips to Canada this April, eight times more than April 2021, but less than half of the 2019 trips, according to the latest Statistics Canada numbers on international arrivals.
American visitors are also slowly starting to return to one of the most iconic tourist attractions on the Prairies, said West Edmonton Mall general manager Danielle Woo. But with inflation raising the cost of travel, she said the mall has seen much of its business from the "staycation" crowd, either from within Alberta or nearby provinces.
"I would say at this point, we are definitely where we were or better than we were pre-pandemic as far as what the mall feels like as a whole," Woo said.
The Skwachays Lodge in Vancouver, an 18-room boutique hotel and art gallery run by the Vancouver Native Housing Society, made just one booking in all of January 2021, said Caroline Phelps, who runs the lodge's Indigenous artists-in-residence program.
The hotel catered mostly to in-province customers before the pandemic, but the return of cruise liners to the B.C. coast has attracted a new set of tourists, she said.
"For the rest of the summer, we're getting booked. Even during the weekdays," Phelps said. "We have a lot of cruise ship travellers that stay."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 28, 2022.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Less than a week after two public sculptures featuring a livestream between Dublin, Ireland, and New York City debuted, 'inappropriate behaviour' in real-time interactions between people in the two cities has prompted a temporary shutdown.
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
Nearly 1,000 wildfires have burned across Canada so far this year. Here's an overview of the situation in Canada.
King Charles III has unveiled the first portrait of the monarch completed since he assumed the throne, a vivid image that depicts him in the bright red uniform of the Welsh Guards against a background of similar hues.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, 'So I raped you,' has been detained in France after a three-year search.
Captain John Tavares scored 15 seconds into overtime and saved his teammates some embarrassment as Canada held on for a 6-5 win over Austria on Tuesday at the world hockey championship.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.