Prince George remained a desirable location for tourists and evacuees during July according to Tourism Prince George.
The wildfire crisis played a huge role in keeping them busy. “It was a huge impact but for all the wrong reasons. We were very busy and the hotels were full and July saw record-breaking numbers for us with 2,600 visitors over at the visitor centre than we expected,” says Erica Hummel, CEO. “Mostly, the people were rerooting, coming through and trying to make their change of plans but we were the hub to come to as we took in over 10,000 evacuees. We were basically the place to come for those who needed some help.”
As for the end of summer and early fall numbers, Hummel expects things to come back to normal. “A lot of the business travellers that were put on hold due to the fires will be still coming to Prince George, they’ve just postponed their dates for conferences and such, so we will see that overflow kind of fall into our August and September numbers. We do anticipate that it’ll be a strong year.”
A Stats Canada report says the province saw 1,600 fewer domestic travellers when compared to July of 2016.
However, the year-to-date international entries into the province are up 3.0%, resulting in 95,000 visitors.
Some of the notable increases came from Mexico(18.5%), Germany (12.5%) and Australia (12.1%) while places travellers from South Korea and the United Kingdom declined sharply at 12.1% and 8.0% respectively.
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