“We’re already listening to individuals query whether or not it’s a great summer season to return (to the Okanagan),” Ballingall stated. “You’ll be able to by no means out-market the information.”
Canada’s PR problem with the wildfires
Marsha Walden, CEO of tourism advertising and marketing Crown company Vacation spot Canada, stated final 12 months’s headline-grabbing hearth season—in addition to the fires presently raging in Western Canada—have an effect on individuals’s notion of this nation. However she stated her group’s personal analysis exhibits just one in 10 potential guests to Canada will contemplate fully cancelling a visit as a result of wildfire exercise.
“Most will alter their itinerary or their timing,” she stated. “So we’ve seen short-term dips in visitation… however individuals nonetheless need to take their vacation.”
Stavros Karlos, with the Tourism Business Affiliation of Alberta, stated rising incidences of wildfire and smoke throughout the nation are an enormous concern to the sector as an entire.
He stated it’s essential that tourism companies have entry to up-to-the-minute, correct details about wildfire exercise and air high quality in order that they will cancel occasions, change their hours, or transfer actions indoors if obligatory.
“In some circumstances, operators might have the chance to nonetheless present an expertise, albeit considerably modified,” Karlos stated. Whereas a ultimate tally hasn’t been accomplished, final summer season’s wildfires possible price B.C.’s Okanagan area thousands and thousands of {dollars} in misplaced tourism revenues, stated Ellen Walker-Matthews, CEO of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Affiliation.
What makes wildfire so difficult from a planning perspective is its sporadic nature, Walker-Matthews stated. Smoke, for instance, can shift quickly on altering winds, affecting one group in the future and one 1,000 kilometres away the subsequent.
“We’re simply attempting to essentially promote what we’ve and be sure that individuals know what the real-time, precise state of affairs is,” stated Walker-Matthews, including the lengthy weekend climate forecast for the Okanagan this 12 months is “stunning… spectacular” with no hearth exercise in sight. ”There’s plenty of issues to see and do, and I believe so long as we simply talk out the info precisely, we’ll see tourism proceed to be sturdy.”