By Antonio Jaramillo.
The pandemic has hit every country differently. There are industries more affected than others, and one that has been affected significantly is Tourism.
In this multi-media article, I am providing important data and facts about how the COVID-19 has affected the Toronto and Canada’s tourism industry. If you prefer to listen, the same information is in the following podcast, but I suggest that you look at the images, graphics, and related links available in the rest of the article:
Some data before COVID-19.
The tourism industry in Toronto has grown over the years. According to Tourism Toronto, from 2000 to 2017, jobs in accommodation and food services, arts, entertainment, and recreation have been growing more compared to others.
Since 2013 there has been a dramatic increase both domestic and international visitors. There are many more domestic visitors to Toronto than international visitors, but international visitors spend almost as much as domestic visitors. Toronto is just one of the cities in Ontario, but as Canada’s largest city it generates much money from the tourism industry. Toronto visitors spent 6.5 billion in 2018 which eventually generated 69,950 jobs and 19.7 billion dollars. Those 19.7 billion dollars were generated in business sales, income, GDP, and government revenue.
According to articles from different media networks like Global news and BlogTO, Toronto gets visitor records since 2017.
Ontario international visitor comparison between 2019 and 2020.
The first state of emergency related to COVID-19 happened in March of 2020. After that and the border closings, there were fewer international travelers. International visitors usually avoided Ontario in colder months before 2020, but after the COVID-19 outbreak in Canada, even during the summer, the numbers were off by a significant percentage because of the non-essential travel restrictions. The situation improved during the Stage 2 reopening, but for example, in July, there was a percentage difference of -96.9%.
A big blow to the tourism industry.
Destination Canada has much information available regarding the Canadian tourism industry. They present many different types of research, and one of them is the National Tourism Indicators. The latest research is about the second quarter of 2020, and it contains significant data regarding the COVID-19 impact.
According to the National Tourism Indicators, the tourism GDP which is the value of Canadian tourism goods and services, declined 46% in the first six months of 2020.
Most of the services related to tourism had significant losses.
The top 3 industries that suffered the most losses related to the COVID-19 measurements were accommodation services, food and beverage services, and passenger air transport, and together they amount to a total loss of 10.8 billion dollars during the second quarter of 2020.
Canadian airlines had 76% fewer flights inside Canada, and they had a loss of revenue of 4 billion dollars.
It was mentioned before that international visitors contribute to the tourism economy in a significant way. However, during 2020 most of the international flight’s purposes were essential to travel. The international visitor spending dropped by 98% between April and June and it amounted to a total loss of 145 billion dollars.
1 Trackback / Pingback