While domestic and transborder tourism to Ottawa is likely to recover from pandemic lows this year, international travel may continue to lag. According to local tourism leaders, a significant drop in Chinese tourism is partially to blame.
According to recently released data from Statistics Canada, last year saw less than one-third the number of tourists from China seen in 2019, before the pandemic began.
In 2023, 225,000 people from China visited Canada. While that is an improvement from peak pandemic years, such as 2021 (41,500 tourists), it’s still well below pre-pandemic levels. Visitor numbers from China peaked in 2018 at 757,000, then dipped slightly to 748,000 the next year.
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Political tensions have served to sour the relationship between Canada and China. Last summer, China began rolling back pandemic-era travel restrictions for its citizens to more than 70 countries, but continued to bar group visits to Canada. At the time, Chinese officials linked the decision to the Canadian federal government’s claims of foreign interference by Beijing.
“It’s a different world than it was in 2019,” Michael Crockatt, president and CEO of Ottawa Tourism, told OBJ Thursday. “Pre-pandemic, China was a very fast-growing source for visitors to Ottawa and it was on pace to become even larger. And, of course, all that has changed.”
One example of the difference, he said, is that air access between the two countries is a fraction of what it was a few years ago.
Due to such changing circumstances, Crockatt said Ottawa Tourism is shifting its focus away from China.
“We’re a very data-driven organization and we want to make sure that we’re using our resources to the best possible capabilities, where we can see that there’s greater opportunities,” he said. “We have to make those tough decisions and reduce our focus on China and even in other markets in Asia. The capacity just isn’t there. The demand is weak.”
Demand remains high from other markets, he said. The majority of visitors to Ottawa are domestic travellers, and while he said business travel is still recovering, leisure travel could return to normal as early as this year.
Outside of Canada, the U.S. has been the largest source of international travellers, and new flights such as Air France’s Paris-Ottawa direct route have strengthened the local connection with other European markets, he said.
“There’s interest in Ottawa where the access is the easiest,” said Crockatt. “France, of course, is one of them, but we’ve seen growth in recent years from Mexico. The connections through Europe are strong, and even in the Middle East, North Africa and India. I can’t overstate the importance of that flight in terms of opening up a lot of Europe to Ottawa.”
Étienne LeBlanc-Cameron, co-owner of Lady Dive Tours Ottawa, raised concerns to OBJ last year about a dip in visitor traffic from the Asia market, but even he was surprised by the most recent data.
“I knew that tourism from China was not where it was in 2019, but I didn’t think it was this low,” he said in an interview Thursday. “This is much lower than I predicted.”
While his company doesn’t track its customers’ demographic data, he said there’s been a noticeable decline in the number of tourists he’s seeing from the Asia-Pacific region.
He pointed to a recent report from Destination Ontario that found that tourism from China, South Korea and Japan has been the slowest to recover from the pandemic.
“We’ve definitely noticed a lot less people from Asia,” he said. “In terms of a specific number, it’s hard to know. Our volume is still at about 70 to 80 per cent of the volume we saw in 2019.”
He added that tourism has also been slower over the winter. He decided not to operate his winter touring company Cobblestone Tours this past season, as warm weather kept the Rideau Canal Skateway from freezing over for any extended period of time.
“We truly want to bring Cobblestone back,” he said. “We’re hoping to see some more (tourism) recovery, especially from the Asia-Pacific community, so we can actually open up and have more of an impact during the winter season and the summer.”
