Image Credit: CFJC Today / Adam Donnelly

By Jill Sperling

COVID-19

Kamloops tourism industry seeing 90 per cent decrease in visitation

Apr 27, 2020 | 3:57 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops is the Tournament Capital of Canada, but this year the sports fields are empty.

“We have 100 tournaments, at least, every year, and they’ve virtually all stopped right now,” said Kamloops Sports Council President Henry Pejril.

Events like the KYSA Slurpee Cup and the Kamloops International Baseball Tournament bring thousands of participants and spectators to Kamloops.

“The biggest event that was going to happen this year was going to be the Canada 55+ Games,” Pejril said, “which would have been in August. Right now we’ve postponed them. We’re trying to come up with the date that we’re going to postpone them to.”

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Hugely popular festivals and celebrations have also been cancelled.

The local tourism industry relies on events like RibFest and the Canada Day event at Riverside Park to draw large crowds of regional and international visitors.

“When those events get cancelled and when Rocky (Mountaineer) delays their arrivals at our city, it’s devastating to our tourism economy, there’s no softer way to put it. It affects the hospitality industry, retail. auto services, every aspect of business in Kamloops,” said Tourism Kamloops CEO Beverly DeSantis.

The high season for tourism in Kamloops is from the May long weekend until Thanksgiving. This year, that’s unlikely to be the case.

“In Kamloops, tourism brings about two million visitors a year and about half a billion dollars of economic benefit,” DeSantis said. “Right now, we’re seeing a 90 per cent decrease in both economic benefit and visitation.”

With fewer tourists coming to the city, hotels are welcoming fewer guests.

“It’s incredibly significant,” said Regional Director at the Sandman Hotel Group, Tyson Andrykew, “70-to-80 per cent reductions in revenue and occupancy. You’re seeing some hotels, a lot of hotels in Kamloops we do share statistics a little bit just around number of occupied nights and a lot of them are reporting under ten rooms sold a night.”

When restrictions begin to lift, Tourism Kamloops believes the visitors will come back.

“We believe Kamloops is well-positioned for initial opening of a tourism destination as we are a drive market,” DeSantis said. “We believe strongly that people will want to get in a car, feel a lot safer getting into a car and driving to a destination, wide open spaces, areas that are not crowded, that have natural resources and beauty that you can enjoy without the worry of grouping and lots of people in and around your way.”

For now, Tourism Kamloops is asking people to explore Kamloops later.