The man in charge of bringing visitors to Vancouver doesn’t seem terribly happy about the state of tourism in his city.
Speaking to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade last week, Royce Chwin, the CEO of Destination Vancouver, said there is a “great dearth” of new tourism experiences and attractions in Vancouver.
The Daily Hive reports that “the last major attraction that opened in Vancouver was almost exactly a decade ago in 2013, when FlyOver Canada opened within the former IMAX theatre space at Canada Place.”
The website said the city also has a shortage of hotel rooms, and that Metro Vancouver has actually lost hotel rooms since the 2010 Winter Olympics. The greater Vancouver area needs 20,000 new rooms by 2050, their report said.
On the plus side, Chwin said he’s happy to see the city of Vancouver and the federal government investing in Gastown and Chinatown, where crime has been an issue.
A room at The DOUGLAS Hotel in Vancouver, a Marriott Autograph Collection property. JIM BYERS PHOTO
“We have tour operators in Europe right now who have stopped selling [tours to] Chinatown and Gastown because they’re worried about safety,” Chwin said. “They’re worried about what the impact would be on their customers, and therefore their business, which is a shame because the businesses in Gastown and Chinatown deserve to have business come to them.”
The Business in Vancouver website said more than $1.3 million of the federal funding will be used modernize buildings, including the Chinese Cultural Centre, Chinatown Storytelling Centre and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Gardens, with new lighting, signage and awnings.
Cedar Key, Florida at sunrise. JIM BYERS PHOTO
FLORIDA TOURISM SETS RECORD
Florida government officials say the state attracted a record 137.6 million visitors last year.
That’s up 12.9% from 2021, and five per cent ahead of 2019, pre-pandemic levels. Of the 137.6 million visitors to the Sunshine State, 127.8 million were domestic travellers.
I was recently in West Palm Beach for the annual Florida Huddle tourism event. Officials there said 2.79 million Canadians visited Florida in 2022. That’s still far below 2019, when 4.09 million Canadians made the trek south.
But VISIT FLORIDA executives said a surge in Canadian visits last fall resulted in 1.04 million visits from Canada. That’s just 4.5 per cent below the fourth quarter figure of 1.09 million for 2019, which is very encouraging for state tourism officials.
The Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, California. JIM BYERS PHOTO
FORBES TRAVEL HONOURS CELEBRITY CRUISES AND LOS ANGELES AREA HOTELS
Forbes Travel last week came out with its Forbes Travel Guide 2023 Star Awards, and it included a cruise category for the first time.
Five Celebrity Cruises ships won Forbes Travel Guide 2023 Star Awards. The winners are independently assessed by a team of inspectors, USA Today points out.
Celebrity Apex, Celebrity Flora and Celebrity Millennium collected four-star ratings, while Celebrity Edge and Celebrity Summit were rated as “recommended.”
“We always reach for the stars at Celebrity Cruises, whether it’s in our exceptional level of service, our innovative ship design, or the highest quality of relaxed luxury experiences we provide onboard,” Celebrity’s president and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said in a press release. “To now be Star-rated multiple times over is such an incredible honor from the Forbes Travel Guide team. It’s confirmation that with our resorts at sea, our guests truly sail on the world’s best places to the world’s best places.”
In the hotel category, I note that Forbes awarded stars to 33 properties in the Los Angeles Area (not including Orange County). Five hotels earned five stars, while 16 received four star ratings. Another dozen properties were recommended.
The five-star properties were all in swanky Beverly Hills The Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, The Peninsula Beverly Hills, L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, The Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, and the posh, pink Beverly Hills Hotel, where I got to stay eight or ten years ago. It’s truly spectacular, and definitely one of a kind.
Among the four-star winners in the greater Los Angeles area was the Fairmont Century Plaza, which I wrote about last year.
The city of Santa Monica, which I dearly love, received four-star ratings for three of its hotels; The Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, Shutters on the Beach and Casa Del Mar, a regal, Spanish-inspired hotel on the beach that I stayed at in 2023 and loved. Forbes gave “recommended” ratings to the Santa Monica Proper Hotel and the Viceroy Santa Monica.
San Francisco garnered 13 hotel awards, including two five-star ratings (The St. Regis and the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay). The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, which I reviewed last year, was given four stars.
