Provided by Chemistry Consulting, March 31, 2017
It would appear that it wasn’t only the residents of Greater Victoria who were affected by our cold, wet March. As we can see from the decline in occupancy rates from 2016, the weather deterred travelers from visiting, even in a month that provides families with the opportunity to get away for Spring Break. On the bright side, year to date numbers are still up over last year, and anecdotal information tells us that the rest of spring and summer bookings are strong.
- It’s been a few years since upward growth trends in Chinese travel activity became apparent. According to Skift, in 2016, Chinese travelers were the world’s largest outbound travel market with 135 million+ traveling outside of China (up 6% over 2015) generating spending of $261 billion (up 12% over 2015). What is particularly noteworthy about these numbers is that less than 5% of the Chinese population have passports.
- In April, the Royal BC Museum exhibit, ‘Terry Fox: Running to the Heart of Canada’ opened and will run until October 1st. A new exhibit is a great reason to check-out the museum and this heart-warming display will appeal to both residents and visitors.
- The most recent edition of Destination Canada’s Tourism Snapshot reports that, in January 2017, Canada welcomed the highest number of overnight visitors for the month of January in Canadian history; total international tourist arrivals reached 875,576, up 9.9% year-over-year and surpassing the previous high, established in 2003, by 4.7%. Particularly strong rates of growth occurred in the number of visitors from Mexico (+51%), China (+46%), Japan (+32%), Australia (+30%) and South Korea (+28%).
For more information, download Chemistry Consulting’s tourism PDF file for March 2017:
