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July 05, 2021TOURISM ACTIVITY TRACKER, APRIL 2021 Statistics Canada has recently implemented a new "Canadian Tourism Activity Tracker" to illustrate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism activity.
The data reported provide a comparison between the reference period (April 2021) and the same period in 2019, prior to the pandemic. This provides a snapshot of how tourism activity has changed, including air travel, surface travel, hotels/accommodations, spending and trip duration.
Tourism activity is monitored for both domestic travellers (those travelling within Canada, including within province more than 40 km from home) as well as inbound travellers from international sources. Overall tourism is estimated as a weighted average of domestic and inbound tourism activities.
Between April 2019 and April 2021, overall tourism activity to Nova Scotia declined by 65.6%. This was slightly smaller than the national decline of 66.3% over this period. Ontario and British Columbia reported the largest declines in tourism activity while Saskatchewan along with Newfoundland and Labrador reported the least declines (but both still over 50%).
Between April 2019 and April 2021, Nova Scotia reported a 56.5% reduction in domestic tourism activity, including tourists visiting other parts of their home province. This was the largest drop among provinces. The national average decline in domestic tourism activity was 52.7%. The largest declines were in Nova Scotia and Ontario while the smallest decline was in Newfoundland and Labrador.
With international border restrictions still in place, inbound tourism from other countries has fallen sharply and remains low. Nova Scotia's inbound tourism was down 89.4% from April 2019 to April 2020. National inbound tourism was down 92.5%, with larger declines in British Columbia and Manitoba. Alberta and Prince Edward Island reported the smallest declines.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism activity has fallen dramatically in all provinces. For a time in the summer of 2020, Nova Scotia experienced a larger decline than in any other province. Since then, the decline in Nova Scotia's tourism activity has fallen in line with the national average.
In the first months of the pandemic, domestic tourism activity declined by 70-80% across most provinces. Although it has recovered somewhat since then, domestic tourism activity remains down significantly among all provinces. The decline in domestic tourism activity has been particularly acute in Nova Scotia, often reporting among the largest declines among provinces.
International inbound tourism activity largely disappeared across most provinces once pandemic-related border restrictions were imposed. Although Nova Scotia reported more severe declines than other provinces in 2020, the province's inbound tourism picked up somewhat in March and April of 2021.
Source: Statistics Canada. Table 24-10-0049-01 Canadian Tourism Activity Tracker and Grouped Data Sources, Canadian Tourism Activity Tracker
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