A walk down the main drag may suggest that all is well in Banff, the tourism hotspot. Restaurant patios are full, and nearby hiking trails are packed on weekends.
But even as Alberta plans to drop nearly all COVID-19 restrictions on July 1st, local businesses and the Banff National Park’s tourism board say they’ll be sorely missing international tourists for a second peak summer season in a row.
The number of people isn’t the problem—1.1 million visitors to the national park in the first half of 2021, barely below 2019’s 1.2 million visitors in the same period.
But many of those visitors in 2019 came from abroad, and Banff Lake Louise Tourism said Canadian visitors to the national park don’t spend their dollars the same way.
“Albertans and Canadians as a whole are much more confident exploring their national parks, so they don’t seek out that support like an interpretive guide or a bus tour,” said Leslie Bruce, President and CEO of the tourism board.
Bruce said tour operators that guide visitors through the park have had an incredibly difficult time staying afloat throughout the pandemic despite trying to appeal to Canadian consumers with new guided activities like e-biking and mountain biking.
She said hotels have also dealt with lower bookings, since many of the visitors to Banff come from nearby cities like Calgary and will day-trip rather than stay for multiple nights.
Though more Canadians can travel from outside Alberta this summer, the length of their stays isn’t yet clear.
“International visitors tend to stay longer, and the big question that we still have … is how long will people stay? Will they stay for five nights?” said Bruce.
“Or are they just passing through? I think that remains to be seen.”
The effect of closed borders has been palpable at the Beaujolais Boutique B&B, which is just off the town’s main road, Banff Ave.
Albert Moser, who owns the bed and breakfast, says his four-room property used to be booked solid through the summer in previous years.
This summer, after dropping his rates by 20 percent, he’s only been able to attract visitors on weekends.
He gets multiple calls for cancellations per week as people who optimistically booked from the U.S. or overseas realize that Canada’s borders may not open in time for their late summer plans.
On weekdays, his property sits empty, and the 69-year-old said the current situation is only feasible because he and his wife are the only people running the business.
Moser said he’s thankful that widespread vaccination will allow him to open after months of sitting empty. He said locals have been enthusiastic about returning to his bed and breakfast multiple times in a summer.
But he said real sector change will only come when borders are opened.
“As many bookings as I get, I also get cancellations — today I had 3 cancellations because people from the U.S. don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Moser.
“At some point they have to make their plans, they’re not going to wait until later in the summer” for their trips to be confirmed, he added.
Meanwhile, for area restaurants, the beginning of the summer brings optimism, especially with Alberta’s speedy re-opening plan, which means they can open without capacity limits by the end of the week.
However, most people in Banff’s tourism industry regard the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” with trepidation.
Stephane Prevost, chef and managing partner of Block Kitchen and Bar and Shoku Izakaya, said it felt like things were getting better last summer, too. However, the winter proved to be difficult, especially when Alberta went into a two-week lockdown in the spring.
That most recent lockdown “was quite a kick in the lower area for everybody,” he said.
“There was a feeling of resignation and frustration for most businesses.”
He said that 2020 ended with their business having about 60 percent of the expected traffic, but there’s a real sense that things are moving forward now.
Every lockdown period has had a tremendous impact on Banff, where, according to Banff Lake Louise Tourism, approximately 90 percent of the economy is either directly or indirectly connected to tourism.
Many tourism jobs vanished immediately after the pandemic started, sending foreign workers packing and many Canadian workers back to their hometowns.
Unemployment skyrocketed to 85 percent at one point early in the pandemic, and hotel vacancy rates rose to 15 percent after being at zero percent at the beginning of 2020.
Despite the drastic impact on international travel, Bruce said very few businesses closed over the past year and a half, and only about four businesses formally told the board they were shutting.
Looking ahead, she is optimistic about Banff’s future as a destination, especially given how the pandemic changed people’s relationship with the outdoors.
“The scale of people that want to be outside has grown, and the biggest thing is that we have the infrastructure to support that.”
Salmaan Farooqui, The Canadian Press
