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 Read more
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David Whitaker was hired in May of this year as chief marketing officer for Brand USA, which was set up in 2010 to market the U.S. to the world. He served as head of Tourism Toronto from 2007 until taking the Brand USA job. Prior to his Toronto job the Georgia native spent 17 years with the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. I sat down with him this week in Orlando at IPW, the massive, annual U.S. tourism session that attracts thousands of travel, trade and media types to talk business and book U.S. travel. Whitaker was in constant Read more
We’ve wasted a lot of years in this country as the Canadian government continually slashed at federal tourism budgets. But rather than be churlish about this, I’m going to congratulate Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Tory government in Ottawa for FINALLY waking up and smelling the visitor numbers. It’s not as much money as tourism folks were asking. The latest releases I saw from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada were talking about $35 million a year from Ottawa for three years. The release they sent out today says Harper has promised $30 million but spread over those same Read more
