Nova Scotia visitor numbers show 'significant decline' in peak tourism season

There were 63,000 fewer visitors to Nova Scotia this summerthan last, marking a drop of nearly five per cent, according to figures released by the Nova Scotia Tourism Agency Friday.

Nova Scotia welcomed 1,247,200 overnight visitors between June and September, the peak tourism season.

Anna Moran, the agency's policy and research director, called it "a significant decline in visitation."

But she said that in comparison to the "low point in visitation to Nova Scotia" in 2013, when fewer than a million people traveled to the province, this summer's figures weren't all bad.

"We're seeing hundreds of thousandsmore visitors coming into Nova Scotia in 2019 compared with 2013," she said.

In 2013, 984,700 people visited Nova Scotia between June and September.

Ferry disruption, Dorian among factors

Moran blames this summer's drop on three main factors the lack of a Maine-to-Yarmouthferry, Hurricane Dorian and the grounding of Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

The province had hoped to have aferry service operating between Bar Harbor and Yarmouth, but delays getting U.S government approvals slowed down work to get a ferry dock and terminal up and running.

"I look at last year for the period of time when the Yarmouth ferry was running, fully 19 per cent of our road visitors from the U.S. came into Nova Scotia through the Yarmouth ferry," said Moran.

"So not having the ferry running this year, it did have a negative impact on our U.S. visitors' ability to get to Nova Scotia."

As far as the 737swere concerned, Moran said the impact of those cancelled flights stretched beyond the summer months.

"We've seen a significant impact from the decline in air capacity coming in from overseas markets because of the grounding of Boeing aircraft this year," she said. "In fact, we've seen a decline of 20 per cent in terms of our overseas visitation into Nova Scotia so far this year."

The 2018numbers were down two per cent from the peak period in 2017, when 1,336,400 visited the province.

Innkeeper David de Jonghwondered if this was a sign of more bad news to comeafter a record-breaking 2017.

"You have to sort of wonder whether or not maybe we've hit peak tourism," he saidfrom his Seawind Landing Country Innon Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore.

"[In] 2017, largely on the back of Canada 150and a larger number of Canadians travelling during that year, we saw the highest number of visitors in a decade," he said.

"Since then the numbers have started to taper off and they're back to where they've been more or less for the past six or eight years."

He said he had a "so-so" summer when it came to bookings and it had nothing to do with the lack of a ferry, fewer flights into the province or a hurricane.

He urged the tourism agency to delve deeper into the numbers to determine whether its existing promotions were working well enough.

"Tourism Nova Scotia really has to look at whether or not its marketing activities are working," he said.

He also wondered if the province was spending enoughmoney to entice visitors to Nova Scotia.

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