“We’re already hearing people question whether it’s a good summer to come (to the Okanagan),” Ballingall said. “You can never out-market the news.”
Canada’s PR issue with the wildfires
Marsha Walden, CEO of tourism marketing Crown corporation Destination Canada, said last year’s headline-grabbing fire season—as well as the fires currently raging in Western Canada—have an impact on people’s perception of this country. But she said her organization’s own research shows only one in 10 potential visitors to Canada will consider completely cancelling a trip due to wildfire activity.
“Most will adjust their itinerary or their timing,” she said. “So we have seen short-term dips in visitation… but people still want to take their holiday.”
Stavros Karlos, with the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta, said increasing incidences of wildfire and smoke across the country are a huge concern to the sector as a whole.
He said it’s important that tourism businesses have access to up-to-the-minute, accurate information about wildfire activity and air quality so that they can cancel events, change their hours, or move activities indoors if necessary.
“In some cases, operators may have the opportunity to still provide an experience, albeit somewhat modified,” Karlos said. While a final tally hasn’t been completed, last summer’s wildfires likely cost B.C.’s Okanagan region millions of dollars in lost tourism revenues, said Ellen Walker-Matthews, CEO of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association.
What makes wildfire so challenging from a planning perspective is its sporadic nature, Walker-Matthews said. Smoke, for example, can shift rapidly on changing winds, affecting one community one day and one 1,000 kilometres away the next.
“We’re just trying to really promote what we have and make sure that people know what the real-time, actual situation is,” said Walker-Matthews, adding the long weekend weather forecast for the Okanagan this year is “beautiful… spectacular” with no fire activity in sight. ”There’s lots of things to see and do, and I think as long as we just communicate out the facts accurately, we’ll see tourism continue to be strong.”
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