Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Tourism Jasper is turning its attention to the domestic market for this summer season as the pandemic is expected to continue limiting international travel.
James Jackson, president and CEO of Tourism Jasper, said they doubled the marketing budget for long-haul Canadians.
“We’ve been able to secure some governmental funding so we will be spending as much, potentially more than we did in 2019 on marketing with very little of that going into international markets like we normally do,” Jackson said.
Tourism Jasper has also increased regional consumer marketing by over 25 per cent and will advertise information on not just health measures but how to generally behave within the park due to the high volume of vehicular traffic last year.
Historically, Canada has had a net deficit in terms of travel with more people leaving than coming.
While noting there are still many unknowns for the summer season, Jackson predicted that travel restrictions would continue to create a “captive market” as more Canadians will have to vacation domestically, which may benefit Jasper.
“A lot of the domestic market hasn’t been to Jasper in a while and this is an amazing opportunity to remind them that they should be visiting on an annual basis,” Jackson said.
“If everybody just works together, continues to be patient and work really hard, we can come out of this with a net positive result.”
However, Jackson noted how domestic travellers tend not to say as long in Jasper and also spend less than their international counterparts.
“Without Americans, without Europeans, without folks from Asia, we’ll be seeing less on-average spending,” he said, but added how travellers from Eastern Canada may mitigate this.
Tourism Jasper anticipates a 15-per-cent increase in gross revenue to the destination compared to last year but the situation would vary between businesses.
Jackson said this increase would occur due to a number of reasons.
Barring an extreme lockdown after Victoria Day weekend, Tourism Jasper expects air traffic into Edmonton from Eastern Canada to increase by 300 per cent.
Rocky Mountaineer and VIA Rail will also run again this summer.
But the most important reason is the amount of disposable income that many Canadians have accumulated since COVID-19 began.
“Those with disposable income have much more and because of the deprivation that they’ve been experiencing due to the restrictions, travel is the No. 1 method of which they want to spend that money immediately post-COVID,” Jackson said.
“What we’ll see is people coming here and they’ll be okay to pay the slightly higher rate and they’ll be willing to spend maybe a bit more money on a nicer steak or a nicer bottle of wine or on a guided private tour for their family.”
In 2020, Jasper fared better than many of its competitors, partly because of its relative distance from urban centres and the large size of the national park.
The townsite also does not have many hotels or shopping malls within lots of elevators or hallways with most of these establishments having outdoor entrances instead.
“All of Jasper’s historical weaknesses suddenly became our strengths in light of COVID,” Jackson said.
“Moving into this year, those strengths will continue to be leveraged and taken advantage of by the domestic market.”
Last week, the Government of Alberta reinstated some health restrictions, such as banning indoor dining, in response to the rising number of COVID cases.
Jackson described these restrictions as a “prudent measure” to protect summer visitation and estimated that they may last up to six weeks.
“Although we’ll experience some pain over the next six weeks, hopefully it positions Alberta in such a way that vaccines can catch up and cases can hopefully start to decrease,” he said.
“Most importantly, hospitalizations can stay low, allowing folks to travel this summer because that’s really what we’re hoping for.”
