Tourism in Canada isn’t expected to rebound until late 2025 or early 2026, says the head of Destination Canada.
Speaking at the marketing agency’s annual general meeting, held virtually on Thursday, Destination Canada President and CEO Marsha Walden said it will take that long for tourism expenditures to reach 2019 levels.
Walden said Destination Canada anticipates total tourism revenues in Canada will reach $78 billion next year. That’s a 51% increase over 2021 but well below the $105 billion Canada raked in for 2019.
“At the depth of the crisis almost every segment of our industry came to a complete standstill,” Walden said. “We lost half a million jobs almost overnight. Today we still remain down by 350,000 jobs.”
“The climb back up will be steep but long,” she said. There also are many issues the tourism and travel industry has to deal with, including the Omicron variant, a labour shortage and inflation.
Walden said the return to business travel is “sluggish,” and that the sector might never fully recover. That would be a huge blow to large Canadian cities that rely on business travel, meetings and convention.
(Forbes today said a new poll found that 39% of U.S. business travellers say they’ll never go on another work trip.)
Still, Walden said there’s reason for optimism.
“While there continue to be setbacks, we are poised for recovery. The travel fundamentals are in place. There’s widespread consumer demand for travel in North America and indeed around the world. And Canada has what the world wants.
“We’re a safe country for travel, with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. We have a respected country brand with high trust, and we have urban spaces connected to nature and wide open wilderness with unforgettable experiences.”
Walden said Canada’s key markets (the U.S., Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, China, Japan and South Korea) are relatively stable. She also said many consumers around the world saved money during the pandemic, and that some of that cash could be used to meet pent-up travel demand.
