For a 2nd year in a row, Canada tops the rankings of FutureBrand's Country Brand Index. It makes me very proud of Canada and it makes for lots of news headlines. The Canadian Tourism Commission is very happy and will milk the news in every conference this year. Canada scores high in many reputation indices. The former champion in the United Nations' Human Development Index (several times # 1 in the early 90's), it now stands at number 6 (although the top ten countries are quite close in decimal points). Canada is also at # 6 in the 2010 Anholt-Gfk Roper Nation Brands Index. Many of our cities rank high as the best cities for quality of life in the Mercer Consulting city rankings. The Economist ranks Vancouver as the best city in the world and Toronto as the 4th best.
I am unabashedly passionate about Canada. In spite of the many challenges we face as a country, in my opinion it is the best country in the world, the post-modern, post-nation state, 21st century country, the world is represented here. But, does all this good fortune translate into tourism growth? No. The evidence shows that it definitely translates into a huge demand for Canadian permanent residence and Canadian citizenship. At best the rankings help keep our tourism levels stable, at worst, the rankings may hurt tourism because they may reinforce the idea that Canada is great to live in, but perhaps not the most interesting or fun place for a vacation thereby instead of being a "we have to go to Canada this year" destination it becomes the "some day we'll go to Canada, it's a nice place" destination. We must note that Canada did not make the top ten in the Country Brand Index Tourism attribute (see http://www.campaignbrief.com/2011/11/futurebrand-releases-results-o.html).
If you work in or follow the Canadian tourism industry, you probably know that it's a $70 Billion industry and that we have faced many challenges to grow visits and revenue for the last 10+ years y (SARS, the War in Iraq, the weak US economy, 9/11 and its consequent security concerns, new foreign destination entering the competition, the visa imposed on Mexicans, the weakness in the EU economies, etc.). Revenue from foreign visitors - which represents about 20% of all tourism revenue - has remained more or less stagnant in real terms (adjusted for inflation) for the last 10 years. But this is good! Given all the challenges, we would have expected a contraction. The reasons may be varied, but one important element is that for several years now, Canada has been focusing on high-yield visitors, those who stay longer and spend more money. Many of the US day-trippers that used to come in the late 90's and early 2000's are gone. But we have been welcoming more Europeans, Asians (particularly Chinese from mainland China and Chinese from Hong Kong), and Latin Americans. Most of these travelers stay longer than American visitors and spend a lot more on average than our southern neighbours.
Consider these dramatic facts:
Total visits to Canada from non-residents in 2001: 47,146,647!
Total international tourism receipts for 2001 in 2001 dollars: $12.6 Billion
Total visits to Canada from non-residents in 2010: 24,669,133!
Total international tourism receipts for 2010: $18.2 Billion
(sources: Worldbank data and StatsCan Advance Travel Information)
Once adjusted for inflation - more or less - international tourism receipts are pretty much the same, but with almost half the number of visitors!
While these numbers are a testament to the industry's resilience and creativity, it is still concerning that international visits continue a steady decline year over year and that our travel deficit continues to grow - Canadians took 43,200,559 trips abroad in 2001 and 53,619,581 trips in 2010.
Conclusion - we must be do a lot more to persuade Canadians to travel more in Canada and to attract more international tourists (particularly those who do not visas) including lobbying for a lifting of visa restrictions to Mexican visitors.
