Tourism

BC has become a world-class tourist destination. Vancouver is consistently ranked among the top ten cities in the world in surveys done by travel magazines. The 2005 Condé Nast Traveller survey placed Vancouver tenth among the world's best cities to visit, and first among all cities in Canada. Besides Vancouver, only Quebec City ranked higher than Victoria as a favoured Canadian destination.

The province's location, bordered by the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west makes it unique within Canada. Its mountain and coastal scenery, opportunities for summer sailing, winter skiing, and other activities such as fishing or sightseeing in coastal and inland waters, all help support the tourism sector. Many of the people who visit and spend money in BC come from other parts of Canada or from the States. Asia is the most important source of visitors from overseas markets.

What is a tourist?

We usually think of a tourist as someone who's vacationing away from home, but the technical definition of a tourist is a little different. It counts anyone who travels to a place outside his or her usual environment and stays away for no more than a year.

The motivation for the trip is irrelevant: the person could be traveling for business reasons, to visit family and friends, or simply for pleasure [1]. It is also not necessary for a person to stay overnight in order to be considered a tourist.

Day trips (also known as excursions) are an important type of tourism. However, to be considered a tourist, you do need to travel at least 80 kilometres away from your home.

What's included in the tourism sector?

Since tourism is an activity and not a specific good or service, strictly speaking there is no such thing as a "tourism industry." Tourists make purchases from a variety of businesses, most of which also provide the same services to local residents. For example, restaurants serve a local clientele as well as tourists. In fact, most of their business is with local residents.

This presents a challenge when attempting to measure the impact that tourists have on the economy. Fortunately, from studies of tourist behaviour, we have a reasonably good idea of what tourists are doing and what they buy when they visit the province. From this information we can determine the effect that tourism has on various industries.

We've included a percentage (which varies by industry, ranging from less than 5% to nearly 100%) of the activities of the following industries in the tourism sector:

• Accommodation services
• Food & beverage services
• Transportation & warehousing
• Retail trade
• Finance, insurance, real estate & leasing
• Various other service industries where there is a small tourist-related component. For example, tourists visit museums, zoos, gardens, ski hills, golf courses and other similar venues when they travel, and these activities are included in the tourism sector.

What's happened in tourism since 1997?

Despite some ups and downs, the sector's share of GDP and employment has remained relatively stable

Employment in the tourism sector hasn't increased quite as fast as in the rest of the economy, and the sector's share of employment dropped from 7.5% to 7.1% between 1997 and 2004.

The sector's share of GDP has remained steady at about 4.5% throughout most of the period. Tourism's share of GDP is considerably lower than its share of total employment. This reflects the labour-intensive nature of many of the industries within this sector.

Tourism activities are very susceptible to changes in economic conditions. When the economy is weak and people feel uncertain about their jobs, they're not as likely to spend money traveling as when they're confident about economic conditions. If they do go on trips, they may travel shorter distances, and probably don't spend as much money in hotels, at restaurants, or on various types of amusements as they would otherwise do.

The tourism sector has faced a number of challenges, which have contributed to slower GDP and employment growth in recent years.

US visitors are an important source of tourism dollars in the province, and the North American economic slowdown that occurred in 2000 and 2001 had an effect on many operators in the tourism sector. The airline industry was already struggling in 2001, when the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington resulted in the closure of North American airspace for several days. The industry is still recovering from the impact of the attacks.

The SARS outbreak in early 2003, which was primarily localized in the Toronto area, caused many visitors from Asia (a prime source of travellers to BC) to shy away from travel to all parts of Canada. Planned tours were cancelled, and travel from this source dropped off significantly. Although the SARS effect was most pronounced among Asian visitors, travellers from other parts of the world also showed some reluctance to visit the province.

Other factors such as the rising value of the Canadian dollar relative to the US currency have also kept US visitors closer to home. In 2005, entries from the US remained well below pre-9/11 levels, while the number of visits had recovered after declining steadily from 2001 to 2003.

How many people work in tourism?

In 2005, there were 117,900 people working in British Columbia's tourism sector. About half (56,800) had jobs in accommodation & food services, while 29,000 worked in the transportation industry. Another 20,700 people working in retail trade had jobs related to tourist activity, while the remaining 11,400 were working in other industries.

Approximately one in every 14 jobs in British Columbia is a result of tourist activity, making the tourism sector one of the larger employers in the province (comparable to the education services industry in terms of its share of total employment).

Accommodation & food services is the biggest employer in the sector

Some industries are more dependent on tourism than others. Employment in the accommodation industry is almost completely driven by tourism activity and over a quarter of the jobs in the food & beverage service industry are due to tourism.

Transportation & warehousing has a significant tourism component as well, while tourist-related jobs in retail trade account for a smaller share of total employment.

What's the outlook for tourism?

Tourism is already an important sector within British Columbia's economy and this will likely continue to be the case in the future. However, more than in some industries, tourism activity is susceptible to changes in the economic climate both within and outside British Columbia.

A number of largely external shocks have had a negative effect on the province's tourism sector. On the other hand, the province is receiving international exposure from Vancouver's selection as the host city for the 2010 Olympic Games, and this offers the potential for further development of the tourism sector in British Columbia.

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[1] The exception to this is migratory workers living away from home on a temporary basis in order to be at their place of work; they are not considered to be tourists.