Ottawa’s tourism takes a hit in 2018, but staves off fear of 2017 ‘hangover’

Last year was a bit of quieter year in Ottawa compared to the event-and celebration-packed 2017, and the city saw a slight decline in tourism compared to the rest of Canada, according to a new report from the Conference Board of Canada.

The number of overnight visits to Ottawa declined 1.5 per cent in 2018, compared to 2017, the report found.

“Everybody was expecting 2018 to be a little bit of a letdown,” says Greg Hermus, associate director with the Conference Board of Canada. “It did, somewhat, perform better than expected, but it still was a decline.”

Hermus says that after a banner year in 2017, where the capital staged large-scale events like La Machine, the Grey Cup and the Juno Awards, seeing a 1.5 per cent decline is not any cause for alarm.

“That's not bad,” says Hermus. And, “that’s over the course of a full year. Obviously, if you just took probably the summer period or right around Canada Day, it would definitely be more negative.”

And things are looking up for 2019. With a couple notable anniversaries — plus the opening of the LRT — Ottawa’s tourism is expected to rebound, with an estimated 1.9 per cent growth in 2019.

“We've got some festivals celebrating anniversaries: Bluesfest … it's a 25th anniversary. The Tulip Festival, the 20th anniversary. The NAC [National Arts Centre] is [in] the 50th anniversary of its operation,” says Hermus. “So we expect to see some increased interest primarily among domestic travellers for for some of those.”

Ottawa Tourism declined Ottawa Matters’ request for an interview, but spokesperson Nives Scott said in a statement: “Given all the wonderful Canada150 festivities and major infrastructure projects we saw in 2017, that year was always going to remain a special year and we were aiming for 2018 to be comparable to 2016 as a baseline with a slight increase.”

She added that the agency is working on crunching their own internal numbers, and hoped to have those available sometime later in the spring.

While Ottawa’s tourism sector took a haircut, the rest of the country saw some modest gains. Overall, the number of overnight visits (one of the metrics the Conference Board uses) rose 1.6 per cent across the country.

“Going back [from] 2014 to 2017, we saw a huge gains from from all markets and I think it it gave the motivation for provincial governments, municipal governments [and] federal governments to put more of an emphasis on tourism,” says Hermus. “It is a positive area of growth and it does employ a lot of people. A lot of people get their start in tourism.”

But to some extent, Canada’s tourism sector could find itself caught in the crossfire of global politics.

Canada has recently found itself in a war of travel advisories with China, a byproduct of the diplomatic spat following Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and the recent death sentence handed out to Canadian Robert Schellenberg.

In an apparent response, Canada updated its travel advisory for China, warning travellers “due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.” Hours later, China fired back with their own travel advisory.

According to the CBC, Ottawa Tourism has suspended its efforts to market Ottawa to Chinese tourists, citing the ongoing diplomatic imbroglio.

“If this drags on we could see a decline and maybe a change in the overall projection where there's challenges with China,” says Hermus. “There's also challenges now with the negotiations with Brexit. Those are two of the most important overseas markets.”

These global tensions are something that, for a government that has sought to promote its tourism sector, are important areas to watch.

As a result, forecasts for the growth of the sector are a bit more cautious. “The forecast going forward is a little more modest,” says Hermus. “We're looking at the 2 to 3% kind of [growth] going forward. So there needs to be work done to help improve some of the impediments that that are out there.”