Ottawa Tourism chief executive officer Michael Crockatt.Jo Riding, executive director of the Canadian Tulip Festival, is excited that her event, which ran from May 12 to 22, drew a half-million visitors, including 250,000 people during its opening weekend alone.
“You can feel the difference, the increased level of comfort ,” Riding says. “People are chatting more. They’re smiling more… Less fear, less worries, longer stays, later visits. It’s really palpable.”While the pandemic may have erased our memories of tourists flocking to the nation’s capital, Crockatt says that 2017—the year Ottawa hosted the event-filled Canada 150 bonanza—set Ottawa on a path toward greater tourism-related prosperity.
After such an exceptional year, the expectation was that Ottawa would see a drop-off in tourism numbers and revenue. But then 2018 matched 2017, Crockatt says. And 2019 surpassed them both, setting a new benchmark.Article content Remote work also means fewer business travelers come to Ottawa. Videoconferencing replaced in-person meetings, so lobbyists and consultants had less reason to travel to Ottawa.
C’est Bon employs specialized chefs for cooking classes and tour guides, and Siska says staffing was “a rollercoaster” during the pandemic. Altaf Sovani has written a book about the current labor crisis facing hotels, restaurants and the hospitality industry in general.Last fall, Sovani published his book Labor Crisis In Hospitality, Tourism & Event Industry: Finding Innovative Solutions for Recruitment and Retention of Millennials.
Millennials want careers that provide benefits and a better work-life balance in the industry, Sovani says. He adds that the tourism and hospitality industries, academia and government will have to row in the same direction to address labour shortages.Many hope that the June 27 launch of Air France’s direct, five-days-a-week flights between Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport and Ottawa will be a boon to tourism in the capital.
RIMAP is placing a half-billion-dollar vote of confidence in Ottawa. Two more hotels are to follow the AC, says Stéphane Pelletier, RIMAP’s regional general manager for Ottawa.