Statistics Canada just published its January 2010 Service Bulletin International Travel: Advance Information (Catalogue # 66-001-P). While it's not surprising, one would hope to see better numbers. Unfortunately, all the work by tourism marketers in Canada leading up to the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Games did not materialize in substantial increases in inbound tourism. However, given the worst economic environment since the Great Depression, particularly in the United States, I don't want to imagine how bad the numbers would look if Canadian DMO's and the CTC had not worked so hard last year to keep Canada in the minds of as many travelers as possible. This is not to say that I am completely happy with the way Canada markets itself internationally, but not being my gig, there's not much I can do about it.
Having said this, I think Montreal stands out in 2009 for their innovative approach to promoting their destination focusing primarily on digital media. I also like what Banff Lake Louise Tourism is doing in this regard. Their Facebook presence is paying off and they are doing a great job to leverage the new meeting place for the world (Facebook has more than 400 million active users now, and it won't be long before it reaches half a billion members - just this past week it was reported that Facebook was, for the first time, the most visited website in the US passing long time champion, Google).
-
Overall including all markets there was a decrease of 9.5% January 2010 compared to January 2009
United States -10.1 %
United Kingdom -4.2
Germany -7.9
China -13.6
Hong Kong -37.6
Australia -14.6
Mexico -52
Brazil -3.9
France bounced back from Jan 2009 with an increase of 13.4% in Jan 2010. There was also good growth from India with a 17.9% increase Jan 2010 from the same period last year.
Going forward I anticipate a better year than 2009 and I expect to see some traction generated by the Winter Games, but it won't necessarily be a large spike. The biggest challenge facing the Canadian Tourism Industry this year and next will be the high Canadian dollar, which closed today at US $0.99 and it's expected to remain at/or near parity for the rest of 2010 and possibly all of 2011.
Jaime
No comments:
Post a Comment