Tourism PG CEO Tracey McBride expects more domestic travellers to visit our area with non-essential travel continuing.
McBride told MyPGNow.com having a large domestic travel clientele isn’t out of the ordinary.
“Like most countries, domestic travel usually makes up 70 to 80% of your business anyways it’s just they don’t spend as much as Americans or overseas visitors because of the amount of time they are spending.”
“We’re starting to see some people from the Lower Mainland and regional travel is picking and we’ve had a few people from Germany that have moved here and are in quarantine that will soon be working but we’re excited that we will have some people can experience some things in Prince George that maybe they haven’t thought of doing.”
The organization is also showing support following a 680-million dollar stimulus package proposal from industry professionals to the BC Government.
McBride added the coronavirus continues to impact local business.
The city lost a number of events including the World Women’s Curling Championship back in March along with several notable conferences.
“We lost millions of dollars just in that one tournament and to think we lost fastball and we had a bunch of conferences postponed or cancelled so it equates to quite a huge impact on the economic spinoff.”
“We’re still not going to see a lot of those numbers change with that 50 person rule in effect and rightfully so to help stop the spread and that in fact has impacted what tourism normally relies on.”
She stated the pandemic is forcing the local business community to adapt to a more domestic travel market.
“Tourism is about moving people around so you can imagine how impactful it has been but I think the actual BC focus and resiliency on supply chains and having some dollars to adapt those businesses is crucial in keeping them solvent.”
“Tourism touches all different areas and the majority of our businesses that make up tourism are small and medium-sized businesses and they’ve been impacted by the crisis. We’ve had close to 15-billion dollars lost in BC and that equates to about 115-thousand in job losses.”
According to Northern BC Tourism CEO Clint Fraser, 55% of businesses in our region are operating at a reduced capacity while 25% are temporarily closed.
Tourism PG is working with Support PG to promote several staycation packages to boost travel numbers to the area.
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