With corporate travel to Ottawa yet to recover from the pandemic, local tourism officials are busy bolstering leisure tourism and making Ottawa the place to be this summer.
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With corporate travel to Ottawa yet to recover from the pandemic, local tourism officials are busy bolstering leisure tourism and making Ottawa the place to be this summer.
“Corporate travel has been slower to recover,” said Jérôme Miousse, director of public affairs at Ottawa Tourism. “We are seeing some good traction with business events, conferences and corporate events, but these types of travel are not short-term wins for the most part.”
Steve Ball, president of the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association (OGHA), said the shift away from corporate travel has been largely due to hybrid or remote workplaces.
“Corporate travel is what's taking the longest to recover because the city's been built around supporting the federal government and the pandemic, in a very short period of time, really diminished our corporate travel business,” explained Ball. “People are no longer coming here to do business with the government in the same volume that they used to because of the work-from-home policies of the federal government.
“Everything's being done on Zoom now. So what's lagging in Ottawa is the corporate travel business,” he continued. “We're still not quite back to our 2019 numbers, whereas other markets have recovered to their pre-pandemic numbers.”
To bridge the gap, organizations such as Ottawa Tourism have set their sights on “moving the needle in the short term by attracting leisure tourism,” Miousse said.
“The summer is when Ottawa kicks into high gear with many festivals and events to attract visitors over specific time periods,” said Miousse. “Major annual events and festivals in the summer months are important for our visitor economy in that they are travel instigators that mean we have a substantial number of visitors that come in and spend some time in our destination every year.”
To attract leisure travellers, Ottawa Tourism has launched several campaigns aimed at enhancing the local tourism experience, including the Oh-to-Ah marketing campaign, which introduces a new way for visitors to experience and learn about Ottawa, as well as travel and visitor passes that encourage tourists to extend their stays.
“This is especially important since it is not unusual for visitors from drive markets to make last-minute decisions to come here for a quick getaway, a long weekend, to visit friends and family,” he added.
Leisure visits are not always reflected in hotel demand, Miousse explained, since many people will choose to stay with friends and family.
According to Ball, summer events such as festivals are “good for everyone” as the city looks to double down on leisure tourism.
One important aspect of the local hotel industry is “compression,” Ball explained, which is when major events fill up local hotels, causing visitors to seek accommodation across the city. In this way, big events like festivals that draw huge crowds are key for growing leisure travel, he said.
“When the downtown is full, for example, that business just spreads out across the whole city,” he said.
“There's only so many rooms — roughly 11,500 rooms — so if half of them are filled up by an event, the other half, by default, start to fill up,” he continued.
For example, Gatineau hotels will be centrestage for the upcoming
, Aug. 29-Sept. 2, expected to draw about 225,000 attendees and 55,000 overnight stays.
Even though the festival is held in Gatineau, Ball explained, hotels across the city, from Kanata to downtown Ottawa to Gatineau, will likely see an impact.
“It's not a big distance to go from downtown Ottawa to get to the festival,” he explained. “So there may be some people who want to stay in the vibrant (ByWard) Market, there are those that want to stay at Casino Lac-Leamy, and others that will want to stay at the Best Western right next door.”
Similarly, tourists visiting Ottawa for Bluesfest might seek hotels downtown. However, as rooms fill up, hotels in Gatineau or Kanata will also see a rise in bookings.
“That’s the nice thing about festivals; depending on the festival, whether it's Jazzfest or Bluesfest or the Hot Air Balloon Festival, they all tend to draw different crowds and so you get a variety of different attendees from out of town as well as in town,” explained Ball. “But, you know, it's not the same people for every festival. So I guess what I'm getting at is the more festivals, the more people here for leisure, the better.”
