Canadians will still flock to Vegas: travel experts

Mass shootings and other attacksdon't seem to be as bad for a city's tourism industry as they used to be.

Just hours after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Winnipegger Bill Clark and his wife Merrill boarded a plane to Las Vegas to meet up with his brother and other relatives at a hotel across the street from the tragic scene of the Oct. 1 mass shooting in the city.

And while his brother recounted for him the chaotic, terrifying moments when nobody knew where Stephen Paddock was shooting from, Bill said at no point did he reconsider whether heading to Las Vegas was a good idea.

"Absolutely not," said Clark, Winnipeg's former acting fire chief. "The odds of getting attacked by a gunman in Las Vegas is a lot less than getting in a plane crash.

"In fact, I have a better chance of something bad happening to me on the drive to the airport."

No cancellations, travel agents say

The Clarks aren't unique in making the decision to travel to Vegas despite last Sunday's tragic incident, which saw 58people killed and about 500 people injured.

Travel agents contacted by CBC News this week all said they hadn't fielded any concerns from customers who have booked trips to Sin City, let alone cancellation requests.

"We find that when events like this happen, it's shocking. But after the shock goes away, they're still willing to go," said KimPaulicelli, manager of travel services with CAA Manitoba. "We haven't seen any cancellations on our end."

The decisionto keepvacation plans intact doesn't mean people are unafraid of getting caught up in unspeakable acts of violence, said Winnipeg travel agent Ron Pradinuk.

As the number of high-profile attacks in Western countries increases, though, the struggles faced by tourism industries in affected cities don't appear to be nearly as dramatic as they once were.

So while New York's tourism industry struggled for a long time following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, other cities hit hard by more recent attacks and bombings haven't seen decreases nearly as dramatic, Pradinuksaid.

"What happened as we got to places like Paris [after the November 2015 attacks there], the time frame between the fear of the incident and the return has shrunken so that people started going back to Paris a lot quicker than they did for New York."

Following the London Bridge attack in June, in which eight people were killed and 48 injured, that city's tourism industry already reeling from the Manchester attack just a month earlier braced for the worst. Instead, it was a momentary blip, with a London tourism official telling the Washington Post that the industry recovered inside of a week.

Similarly, Florida recorded record numbers of tourists in 2016, despite a mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub and concerns about the spread of the Zika virus.

And while Paris saw a small decrease in tourists last year following the November 2015 attacks, numbers released by that city's regional tourism committee say tourism had bounced back by the end of last year.

Tourists 'savvy'

Paulicelli said people are more savvy when travelling than they used to be andthus not as likely to rethink their plans when tragic events occur in travel destinations.

"What we tell people is, you can't be frightened to continue to dream and to go away and experience and to enjoy trips and travelling," she said.

Pradinuk said history suggests Las Vegas' status as a tourist destination is in no danger of disappearing.

"What will happen, in my opinion, is people will come back to Las Vegas relatively quickly," he said. "Not immediately, but they will start coming back."

Clark, who returned from Las Vegas on Friday, said the mood in the city was decidedly sombre this week, noting the broken window from which the gunman shot justacross the street from where Clark was staying was a reminder of what had happened.

But by the time he and his wife were leaving to fly home, Clark said the mood was already starting to change inthe entertainment mecca.

"That's the thing about that city. Every three days, people fly in and people fly out and the population [on the Strip] changes," he said. "You could tell the atmosphere was already getting lighter."