Wednesday, April 1st the Minister of State for Tourism, Maxime Bernier, was in Vancouver with Rob Taylor, President & CEO (Interim), TIAC and David Goldstein, President & CEO, CTC to announce the 2014 Travel & Tourism numbers.

Despite success in CTC markets, Canada's overall international visitation growth rate was just 3.2% falling well behind the global average of 4.6%. This is due in part to our weak performance in the US market (+0.9%, or just over 100 000 people). 

CTC Celebrates an Extraordinary Year

With 10.6% growth, 2014 was a banner year for the CTC in their ten target markets. The core markets of France, Germany, U.K. and Australia have rebounded with solid growth around 5% as emerging markets like Latin America (+11.4%) and Asia (+20.9%) boomed. Overall, China, India, Brazil, France and Australia broke records by surpassing previous arrival peaks. In fact, CTC overseas markets grew faster than total overseas growth -- a clear indication that their presence in these markets is making a difference.

Effective Policy Changes

TIAC welcomed a number of government policy changes that have helped to facilitate the demand created by CTC's marketing campaigns.  For example, the CAN+ visa program introduced to Mexico in May helped attract 12% more visitors than the previous year. Increased air access between Brazil and Canada also had a noticeable impact. TIAC continues to work with the government on its MAP priorities (marketing, access and product/people): easing traveller documentation requirements, reducing the aviation cost burden on flyers as well as ensuring our businesses can fulfill our labour needs.

Importance of the US Market

This year 7 out of 10 visitors to Canada were American which means that even phenomenal growth out of emerging markets risks being overshadowed by slow US growth. To highlight the importance of growth in the US consider this:

If American visitation to Canada grew at the same pace as visitation from CTC's markets, we would see an additional 1.1 million visitors.

A low Canadian dollar will certainly help encourage more Americans to visit, but our industry's growth strategy must be more proactive than simply relying on favourable currency exchange. With the US economy rebounding and passport ownership on the rise, now is the time to re-engage in a national-level leisure travel marketing campaign. To this end, TIAC is proposing Connecting America , a government co-investment in a strategically-designed and nationally-aligned marketing campaign. 

Note: In an earlier TIAC Talk we reported the publicly available Statistics Canada data which are seasonally adjusted. For this issue, we used the seasonally unadjusted numbers (i.e. reflecting holidays and major events) recently published by the CTC.

Click on the map to learn more about Connecting America.