Ontario's Make or Break Tourism Season? | The Agenda

tourism means fun and relaxation to most of us but for huge parts of this province it's big business and while you may have blocked it out of your mind at this time last year we were barely coming out of another wave of covet 19 locked in the mad dash to get vaccinated summer didn't look as rosy as it does now not by a long shot will this year be enough to make up for the pandemic induced economic disruption let's find out joining us now in nadona singh on manitoulin island kevin iscockagen president and ceo of indigenous tourism ontario in niagara on the lake ontario lord mayor betty desero in ontario's capital city chris bloher president ceo of the tourism industry association of ontario and rachel dodds professor at the ted rogers school of hospitality and tourism management at the now renamed toronto metropolitan university and we're glad to have you four with us tonight here on tvo i need to spare a quick word for betty dizzero here because once upon a time 37 years ago i was a toronto city council reporter and you were on toronto city council betty desero and i know we've seen each other a few times since then but not much so welcome lord mayor lovely to have you on our program again let's do just a bit of a fact file off the top here and see what tourism looks like in the province of ontario it matters a lot the gdp for tourism in ontario is 36.8 billion dollars a year making it more than four percent of the provincial gdp tourism employment 396 000 people make their living at this that's more than five percent of provincial employment total inbound travel from january 21 to december 2021 a 14.6 percent drop from the year before thank you covid and total outbound travel in 2021 was off almost 40 percent from the previous year kevin i wonder if you could get us started here and describe what the tourism industry has been like for you over the past two years thanks steve uh bigwatch and uh gigadone and adiz nakaz and the donuting donja ball and uh i'm really glad to be here today and share this because the travel industry is an important one to the indigenous community and it's we've really struggled prior to the global global pandemic we uh had unprecedented times unprecedented demand and there was so much interest in indigenous experiences with international travelers domestic travelers and now uh with the pandemic we've had a little break from that but uh that that's a positive thing in our mind we always try to find the positive in what's going on but this is uh a time where we're seeing a lot of growth and there's still a lot of demand there's unprecedented demand even more so than ever before for indigenous experiences in this country kevin let's learn a little something here what language did you just speak and what did you say so i was speaking initially one and i gave you my traditional name which loosely translates to the man who speaks for the people is my name and nadon is saying is where my spirit is that's loosely translated to manitoulin island is where my spirit is and where my heart is and that's where i make my my home today fantastic thank you for that chris give us the story from across the province of ontario what are you seeing well the last two years have been almost anything but catastrophic to be brutal steve it's been a very tough time for the industry we've seen revenue declines of up to 93 percent uh we've seen many of our businesses take on six figure debts we lost over a hundred thousand jobs at the very peak and the worst of the lockdowns that were happening in ontario so it's been a very very difficult time and it's only really thanks to the innovation the collaboration with government that we've been able to keep the majority of our industry afloat during the last two years and that's why we're so excited about the next summer and the next year or two because we really need to try and uh make up the lost time that we've suffered over this pandemic period let me go to the lord mayor of niagara on the lake next and and i guess for those who don't know we should say that yes lord mayor is the title in niagara on the lake when you are the mayor there and you know when you think tourism in this province niagara on the lake is one of the places we all think of what's it been like there during the pandemic well during the pandemic it was our tourism industry is the largest economic driver we have for niagara on the lake so you know 80 90 percent of our employees are in the tourism sector either in wineries the shaw shops tours uh you know accommodation and they suffered uh tremendously during the two years of covet some things we were trying to assist in terms of you know waiving fees that they have to pay the patios were great help to some of the restaurants the hotels were allowed to stay open but getting staff was very difficult and some chose just to close because of the precautions with the pandemic so a lot of people in our in our economy uh suffered and this summer will be the telltale in terms of them trying to uh recover from the last two years i also just wanted to say that the government subsidies were also a great help as well but nothing um you know helps more than having people come into shops and and come to visit and let me do a quick follow-up with you can you tell now that covert thankfully is not as fatal today as it was over the past two years have things started to come back uh in niagara on the lake yes um the uh they have we're getting more and more uh tourists coming into niagara on the lake and and um we haven't reached the capacities we've had pre-pandemic but um there are more people coming and what i'm hearing anecdotally is that people are spending more money staying longer and so that's good what's what's sort of hurting our economy at the moment is the labor market and the lack of the ability to get employees all right rachel dodds you obviously study this for a living tell us what you've noticed over the past couple of years in terms of tourism province-wide well one of our things is that our students especially at our university have had to go find other jobs because the jobs although there's a huge labor shortage many many people didn't necessarily want to be frontline workers and that something that's really come to light is how we treat our staff that we have had a labor shortage long before covet and now we have a labor shortage but that we need to make sure that we treat our staff better because most of the labor in our industry has been long hours lower pay and shift work and the co and the covet pandemic really highlighted the fact that we might not always want to do that kind of a job so we need to that's been a that's been a positive i think and a negative chris can you follow up on that is it simply the case that that more and more people are simply not going to put up with the kind of uh miserable hours or perhaps even abuse from management that they did in the past steve there's obviously good employers and there's bad employers in all industries but rachel's absolutely right this was a problem that existed well before any of us knew about where wuhan in china was but one of the things that we've definitely seen during the pandemic at its worst is that people need to pay their mortgages they need to pay their rent they need to put food on the table and when sometimes the province was closing businesses or opening businesses should i say on a friday and then closing them again on monday there was no consistency for people and so obviously people went to find work that meant that they could put food on the table and so that unfortunately is a problem you're going to have an industry which is so reliant on people being close to each other experiencing new experiences getting out and travel and those challenges that those frontline staff that rachel mentioned faced during this pandemic were extreme we were asking people for vaccine certificates we're asking people to go six feet apart we're asking people if everyone in their party had had a vaccination so there were huge challenges put on staff and i'm not surprised to see that not all of them have returned back to our industry kevin what's it been like for you on manitoulin island to both hire and maintain staff steve with the work that we do we help service and support indigenous tourism operators across ontario but not just here on manitoulin but right across the province we're seeing labor shortages uh without a doubt and i'm often quoted as saying we're the original tour guides to these lands the original hosts these lands and there's no one better to be in tourism than indigenous people but at the same time we're not the solution for labor shortages and the challenges we face collectively but we are a part of the solution and we've done some great things here to to partner and collaborate with others very specifically the three fires collaborative quests get more indigenous people in the workforce but we're seeing the same thing the rest of the industry is seeing very challenging times to get people involved and there's just simply not enough people to fill all the roles well rachel let's see what we might be able to do about fixing that what recommendations might you have for the tourism industry in order to ameliorate this situation well one thing i think we could do a number of things but one thing i think we really need to focus on value rather than cost canada is expensive ontario is expensive it's one of the reasons why so many of of our residents of why we all go down south to escape the weather so we need to really focus on what's different about ontario why we should stay why we should travel we also need to be really cognizant of over tourism during the pandemic most people stayed at home but that didn't stop the shortage of people parking on other people's lawns crowding conservation areas crowding local places and those kinds of things were happening all over the world but they weren't happening in our backyard and all of a sudden covet highlighted that it's happening everywhere and travel needs to be better all these words academics i know i'm one of them love to come up with words like you know ecotourism and sustainable tourism and responsible tourism and now it's rejuvenative tourism but at the end of the day they all mean the same thing we need to leave places better than we found them if we want to keep this industry for the long term well lord mayor you know the businesses in niagara on the lake are they offering particularly new or different incentives in order to try to attract workers and keep them uh yes they are um i i won't go into the details of what they're doing um but in terms of salaries increasing um yes they have been talking about uh increasing uh salaries and trying to figure out how uh transportation can work better in niagara on the lake we have two issues here that council is also trying to work on one of them is housing is really expensive in niagara on the lake probably um higher than a lot of other municipalities in niagara region and the other is transportation and because we're sort of an island at the end of of the line in terms of the niagara region transportation a lot of people one can't afford to live in niagara on the lake and can't get adequate transit to get to jobs in niagara on the lake so the the town is looking at two things number one we've increased the service uh for uh niagara um on demand transit in niagara on the lake so people can use it at uh later hours rather than having to stop everything at six o'clock and the second thing that we're and that will start immediately and the second thing that we're doing is uh looking at the provincially mandated secondary suites and trying to figure out a way within our zoning bylaws to allow people to offer long-term rentals in secondary suites easier than having to go through a lot of red tape and rezoning and everything else so those two issues town is trying to address the businesses are trying to address the issue of salaries and and also transportation so i'm we're working towards a solution um and i'm hopeful that everything we do will help let me follow up with chris on that because yeah we have heard particularly during the election campaign housing housing housing it's just a crisis and the people that we want to to fill our businesses and to serve us in tourism can't afford to live in the places where they work that's not a problem that's going to be solved tomorrow chris what do we do about that well it's a huge problem stephen it's a problem steve that is affecting the tourism industry across the globe in western europe australia everywhere and there are some governments taking some decisive action uh you know very high quotas of affordable housing in it it's housing planning but also relocation costs paying for people who they want to work in employment in australia they're paying people to relocate into different provinces to work within the tourism industry italy has just passed a new piece of legislation that is giving people uh earning less than 35 000 euros free transportation in germany they're setting aside rented accommodation for people who work in front of house uh jobs there are active things that the government can do but like the mayor said we need long-term planning to make sure that we have affordable housing for many other people just out not just within the tourism industry and this is a problem that really could uh you know derail our economic recovery in the tourism industry in the long term you know we left a lot of opportunities on the table because of a lack of housing a lack of transportation a lack of infrastructure and other destinations and other countries will overtake us in their share of the market if we don't act now kevin let me state the obvious if people want to go tour northern ontario particularly some fascinating places with great indigenous history they got to do a lot of driving and we all know what the price of gas is these days not to mention other goods and i'm wondering if you could tell us what you think the high cost of gas and travel has done to your efforts to improve tourism in the province yeah well the high cost of gas and other expenses that go along with travel and operating a business have definitely affected our operators in northern ontario and beyond we've tried to embrace technology at indigenous tourism material to help provide new revenue streams for our operators and we do things like virtual reality experiences augmented reality experiences but definitely like with the the cost of gas for for vehicles alone uh you're gonna see and we are seeing it now that uh although there's a pent up demand we're seeing a decline in you know the number of people traveling around and a lot of the indigenous communities are are remote communities as well in northern ontario so flying to these communities is was challenging pre-pandemic uh pre-the era that we're in in terms of inflation so it's going to be even more and more challenging and in our role we're trying to support the the operators and the communities to embrace technology as best they can so connectivity is a big item but you know we all want to help them share their story on their terms and help educate other travelers and other canadians so both domestically and all those international travelers as well so we're feeling those effects as well steve just like everybody else's betty desero i don't know if this is a deal breaker but a lot of people who don't drive electric vehicles drive to niagara on the lake and if you're driving from toronto i mean that's that could be a tank of gas to get there and back and that's 100 bucks 120 bucks these days have you heard people complaining about how expensive it is to get to your neck of the woods now um yes we have um not uh not a lot i mean people are complaining generally about the price of gas going up and what that's doing to even uh you know people working in the tourism industry uh having to uh service uh so it's coming from both sides um what we're trying to do now is work with the region to find or improve alternatives like the connection to the go train like the we're looking at other alternatives in terms of buses rather than cars some type of water crossing so we're looking at different ways that we can do much more community transportation rather than you know two people in a car all the time chris can i get you on this because yes covet might be less of a factor today but the price of gas and goods is more of a factor today so how does it all work itself out well inflation was at a record high in march of 6.7 it was even higher for food and other key suppliers for many of uh for our businesses and so it's been a double whammy for the tourism industry not only is it potentially putting off potential tourists particularly that rubber tyre tourism market from the united states uh comparing the price of gas from their own country or potentially filling up in canada and doing a road trip but also it takes a lot of fuel for our businesses and some of our remote areas to run their businesses so it's a double whammy and you know and i've had a lot of frustrated calls from our members during the election period who wanted to hear more about how potential governments could help them during this cost of living crisis because this is a very dangerous time for the tourism industry at the moment many people think we're out of the woods many people think that our businesses it's plain sailing from now on but things like the cost of living crisis are really going to damage their ability to kick on during this summer and potentially could put businesses that have survived the last two years at risk of closure rachel what do we do about this i know governments are trying to take the price of gas excuse me take the tax off the price of gas but even still it's more than two bucks a liter what's that going to do well i i was going to say i think it's only going to keep going up especially when you start adding carbon taxes and things like that but there are a lot of solutions and some really innovative wonderful social enterprises in ontario that people can take can take um advantage of for example if you are going to go you want to go for a walk or you want to go to a region you can take the train not everywhere of course you can take the bus but there's an organization called park bus which brings people out of their cars onto the parks it reduces carbon it gives them an amazing opportunity to meet some like-minded people and put some money back into the local community and those are the kinds of things that communities want they need to see the value from tourists so if somebody fills up in toronto puts all their food in their car and they drive up to say for example lake simcoe for an afternoon and all that's left behind is garbage the community doesn't really see any benefit from that and so they're not going to want you there those are the kinds of things that the tourism industry has control over and the tourist has control over we don't have control over the price of gas but we do have control over what we bring into the local community making the effort to get to know local people making sure that we eat in local restaurants putting some money back into the economy understanding that we're all feeling the pinch right now but some people more than others so there's some things we can do to be really positive and we can get a break and enjoy ourselves and you know enjoy the wonderful summer sunshine that's about to be on us and we have beautiful lakes beautiful trails wonderful restaurants great food amazing indigenous culture those are the things that we can celebrate and enjoy and ensure we put some money back into those pockets of the people who really need it but it does require us to be a little more creative in the way we approach these things yes that's not a bad thing these days i think i don't think everyone talks about recovery but it's not coped the tourism industry didn't have a cold tourism industry was very very very busy in 2019 and i'm not so sure that going back to the way it was is necessarily always the best thing we need to do things better and we need to start doing them now it's not something that has to happen 20 years in the future right now you did mention covet and let me follow up with kevin on that is i mean i said earlier covet thankfully is not as fatal today as it was a year or two ago but it's still there and i'm wondering if it's still kevin in your world a concern for operators it definitely is so steve as uh you know we work within the provincial and the federal guidelines around the global pandemic we also have another layer of government uh within our communities that we have to be respectful of because we've got highly vulnerable people uh within our communities and there's still some restrictions in place that the rest of ontarians and canadians may not face and with that what we're very concerned about is our businesses are highly vulnerable to begin with although we've been doing tourism as we say for over 500 years or even longer in some people's eyes uh we're new to this tourism game as we know it today uh to what rachel referred to it's we're super busy in 2019 we're still incredibly busy and we need to be mindful of that and we need to be respectful of those business operators who really struggled just to survive and put food on the table uh during the global pandemic and now we we don't want to overrun them and close them down for other reasons but the global pandemic in any you know we never know what tomorrow is going to hold so we want to make sure we help and support as many operators as we possibly can and uh the pandemic is still having its effects within our communities let me pursue that with chris you know as you alluded to earlier there are i mean thousands upon thousands of businesses that have gone into even further debt than they might otherwise have in order to stay afloat over the past two years and i'm wondering if you can give us a sense about how those businesses that are still alive that have accumulated all of that extra debt how are they managing it how are they going to come out of it well steve they're managing it by making very difficult decisions on their own pay about how many people they're hiring about possible uh you know ending potential expansion plans you know the size of the debt we're seeing on our members is unprecedented i was just speaking to our colleagues at nature and outdoor tourism ontario who really focus on resource-based tourism in the north and they're saying that average membership debt is 187 000 and so many people are making the decision right now they're looking at some of the obstacles that still exist exist to travel for instance americans still need to be double vaccinated to come over to northern ontario that means one in two of their old clientele is still not eligible to come to their businesses and so many of our northern ontario businesses are still at one in four of their or 25 of the level of revenues that they were pre-covered 19. so there are some still significant obstacles to travel that mean that our businesses aren't going to be recouping those revenues that many people would expect them to over the summer so they're taking tough decisions steve and one of the things we're working hard with the government at the moment on a region on a national level is you know let's try and forgive some of that debt that has been accumulated over the last two and a half years some of that government debt at four percent could be forgiven at a higher rate or even written off the best thing we could do to support our industry is to try and write off some of that debt and get rid of that millstone around their neck as they look to recover and that's a that's a set of conversations that's going on right now and i think could be a big boost industry moving forward so they can do things like rachel has just suggested invest in new technologies invest in new ways of businesses more sustainable and green uh functionality and technology that money could be used to reimagine our industry within ontario not just simply rebuild it from pre-covert betty desero i wonder if there's anything the municipality can do to alleviate the burden of that 187 thousand dollar average debt that these small businesses are carrying i know you need property tax revenue to pay for services but is there anything the municipality is considering in that regard um we did a lot of work during uh the pandemic uh in terms of waiving fees and uh and trying to uh work with our businesses to um like instead of panicking what happened was they involved in online uh marketing we started shop noddle uh we've been you know we allowed the patios to take place for restaurants so we've been working with our businesses throughout the pandemic to figure out what the new normal and the new technology will look like in terms of reducing taxes we're looking at putting in a heritage tax rebate um that may or may not fly at this point as you said we'll we'll need to try to keep our own uh keep our taxes to pay for the things that we've been working on throughout kovit as well in the municipality but um we meet with our with our businesses frequently to find out what more we can do to assist them well let me follow up with rachel on that because we've had quite the laundry list of concerns that tourism operators would be dealing with right now and i wonder what's what's at the top of the list based on your travels what do you hear is the number one concern of operators nowadays oh i don't think there is just one concern cost definitely as everyone else has really mentioned staffing is also a really huge issue also making sure that they can provide a competitive offering compared to everybody else but we can't forget that 90 of our tourism industry is made up of small and medium-sized enterprises so we often what makes the news are the big people the big hotels the big change but actually our industry is 90 small the medium-sized enterprises so we really need those are the kinds of considerations that that comes up and for those organizations they can't pay to play especially not in a climate like this so probably the most important thing is is we need to be as forgiving as we were during covet to make sure that we all work together and find rethink tourism and rethink what it's been historically to make it a better place for everyone operators environment and tourists together well with just a few minutes to go here i guess it would be a nice thing if we could leave this on somewhat more of an upbeat and positive note and to that end uh kevin maybe you could tell us what are you looking forward to this summer well i'm looking forward to people traveling around i know there's some pent up demand and people have been getting a little bit of cabin fever and here in the community where my office is located on tacoma county first nation they just had their their their first pow in three years now and it was packed people were out and about and it was a great time they're visiting they're celebrating together and i'm looking forward to that happening this summer where everybody gets out and enjoys the nice weather here in ontario and uh spends a little bit of dollars around uh the regions and uh everyone's kind to each other nice to each other and it's just out enjoying and having a good time this summer amen to that betty dezero are you going to get to a play at shaw this year oh yes for sure um yeah the shaw's got some great uh plays this year they are celebrating their 60th year and um and and we're really excited about being able to uh showcase the shaw this year ben we also have a lot of um sort of organic kind of festivals all our you know cherry uh peach and strawberry festivals and people getting out so that that's really it's really gonna be a good summer for us i think and the numbers in terms of tourism are increasing every day well if you're a history nerd like me you just love going to fort george and you love seeing the first ever legislative assembly building in the history of the province of ontario which only goes back well a century and a half or more actually so uh that's another good reason to go to niagara on the lake uh okay um chris how about you what are you looking forward to this summer oh steve after two years of having to have conversations like this with my members on very small screens i'm just excited to be able to get in a car and travel around the province go to manitoulin island spend some time with kevin and his fantastic indigenous tourism operators just getting out and enjoying what we have in ontario listen we're very fortunate in our province that we have an incredible tourism offer that not only people in this province want to take part in and visit but across the world and so uh i came to ontario uh three and a half years ago i immigrated here from the uk because i fell in love with this province and i just can't wait to get out enjoy it and spend some time with friends again instead of sharing screens like this really i could have sworn that was a huntsville ontario accident you had there really you're from you're from away are you okay go figure uh rachel you get the last word here what are you looking forward to this summer not wearing a mask i have to say uh if i i think sometimes we still wear them and and we need to be very sympathetic to everybody who has has other issues that that's still going on and a lot of people are still highly at risk but i'm really looking forward to seeing people enjoying our wonderful lakes and and the water and the beaches that's it's it's lovely those are four perfect answers of things to look forward to this summer can i think rachel dodds from i don't know what you guys call it do you call it tormet you or tmu or what's the new acronym toronto met team you it doesn't matter okay you know all of them are great these days gotcha chris bleuer from the tourism industry association of ontario betty desero the lord mayor of niagara on the lake kevin ashcock again president ceo indigenous tourism ontario really good of all of you to join us here on tvo tonight thank you thank you thank you thank you very much the agenda with steve pakin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you thank you for supporting tvo's journalism

2022-06-10 00:36

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