Today is the last day of Canada's Tourism Leadership Summit taking place in St. John, New Brunswick. This year it must be one of the most important summits of recent years, given the enormous challenges the industry has been facing and will continue to face in the foreseeable future. The global economy is the number one challenge, of course, as it has affected travel everywhere. Canada has been hit particularly hard, and if weren't for the domestic traveller, the industry would be in much worse shape. Going forward, there are some who believe the Winter Olympics will give a boost to our tourism performance. That remains to be seen. The Games will not fix America's economic challenges. The US economy has been showing growth lately as a result of the massive economic stimulus. But, as economists point out, recovery in employment always lags other economic indicators and employment will the key component of a sustainable recovery. Add to that the massive deficits that Americans are incurring to try and get out of the hole Wall Street dug for them and you can see that there will be continuing downward pressure on the greenback, which will continue to make the Canadian dollar attractive to foreign currency traders. The combination of a weak US dollar and a strong Canadian dollar is a double whammy for Canadian tourism.
-What to do? We must continue to work hard to differentiate Canada from other tourism destinations and try as much as possible to offer the most benefit per dollar compared to other places. The CTC efforts to continue the LocalsKnow campaign to stimulate domestic tourism (or at least minimize the impact of a high loonie that entices Canadians to travel south in the winter) should help a bit, but in the long run it will be the quality of the tourism experience that will sustain us. Everything from infrastructure to guest services should be world class to not only attract domestic and international travellers, but also to make them advocates for our destinations and incent them to create conversational capital in the digital social space.
-Unfortunately, the economic environment and Canada's imposition of visa restrictions on Mexican visitors has impacted my business in a material way which has forced me to cut back on travel and conferences. There's much work to do and little time available. So I had to miss this Tourism Leadership Summit for the first time in years. But I look forward to attending Canada-e-Connect eTourism Strategy Conference 2010 in Montreal as Co-Chair and seeing many of you who attended this years TIAC Summit.
-Jaime Horwitz MBA
Cactus Rock New Media Ltd.
The Canadá en Español Network
CanadAmigos Social Networking
No comments:
Post a Comment