Tourist season kicks off
From the Niagara Gazette:
This weekend the prime tourist season started with most visitors likely arriving from the Canadian side of the river.
Over there, the long Victoria Day weekend celebrates the birthday of Queen Victoria of England. Banks, schools and government offices will be closed in Ontario on Monday.
Traffic should be backed up at the international bridges as Canadians hop across to shop with their higher-valued currency. On Friday, that dollar was worth $1.03 (U.S.).
That hurts, if you happened to be stuck in Canada with your American buck. Chances are an Ontario merchant smugly told you that your Yankee dollar was worth 90 cents. (It’s called payback time.)
Next weekend, many of us will be off Monday to observe our Memorial Day holiday.
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U.S.-Canada border traffic remains in decline
From Herald Net:
Stricter travel document requirements in place since 2009 haven’t meant endless waits for motorists along one of the busiest stretches of the U.S.-Canada border, as many had feared, but Americans are avoiding short trips to Canada anyway, a study released Friday found.
They seem to think there’s no reason to go.
The study looked at how the passport rule and other changes at the border since the Sept. 11 terror attacks have affected the flow of business and tourists across the four bridges between the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area and Ontario. It was commissioned by a consortium led by The Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance.
The alliance had cautioned early on that the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, with its requirement that travelers show passports or an equivalent document beginning July 1, 2009, would keep travelers at home, unwilling to bother with expensive passports and traffic backups.
Already along the border, passenger vehicle crossings have been on the decline since 2002 because of things like the SARS virus scare, the economy and gasoline prices.
But the preliminary study results showed that even travelers who have the proper identification under WHTI aren’t making as many day trips, and the perception they’ll get stuck in long lines is only part of the problem.
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How did Sept. 11 affect Falls tourism?
From WIVB Channel 4 in Buffalo:
A new study is expected to shed light on how changes along the northern border since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have affected tourism and business in the busy Niagara Falls corridor.
The study was commissioned by a consortium led by the Binational Economic & Tourism Alliance. Preliminary findings are being released during a conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Friday.
Also see US-Canada tourism partners examine border issues from the Oklahoman
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‘Our interests are … closely aligned:’ Nicholson
From the Niagara Falls Review:
The new agreement on border co-operation between Canada and the U.S., announced Friday by the two countries’ leaders, is a continuation of the existing relationship rather than the start of something radically new, says Canada’s Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, the MP for Niagara Falls.
“Some of that process has already begun,” Nicholson said Saturday, the day after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new body aimed at cutting red tape and making it easier to move people and goods across the border.
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Winter tourism’s guiding light
From the Toronto Sun:
It started as a way to keep up with our American competition.
Now, nearly three decades later, the Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Lights has no competition.
When rumblings of a winter lights festival first started in 1982, organizers watched what was happening across the border with envy. Established two years earlier, the Festival of Lights in Niagara Falls, N.Y., was an immediate hit, attracting 250,000 people during its first year. It was one of the rare times our American counterpart got the tourism jump on us.
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WOLCOTT: Clinking Canadian coin cache
From the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal:
Let’s say you have 30 cents in change. There are only two coins, but one of them is not a quarter. What are the coins?
It took a bit of time for me to catch on to my great nephew’s puzzler. Now I’m wondering what to do with my Canadian coins, a quarter and a nickel.
One night this week, I walked over the Rainbow Bridge to Canada.
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More US visitors in Niagara Falls, Ontario?
Yesterday I linked to a Niagara Falls Review article where there seemed to be some optimism for the summer business. I wanted to add my 2¢…
Last year when June came around, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) came into effect, and all travelers going across the border needed a passport or some other type of secure document. It hit the city hard.
The first thing I noticed last year was that there seemed to be very few students around. Each year previously, you’d see huge groups of kids visiting on school trips. I don’t know for sure where they came from in previous years, but they weren’t anywhere last year. I assume that the US schools didn’t bother with the trip. Now, a year later, there have been lots of kids again. I’m not sure if it is back where it was, but it’s more than last year for sure. I’m sure there are a lot of Canadian schools, but there were t-shirts around from US schools as well. Part of the reason will be that many more people have passports. Another will be that it turns out that school groups where kids are under 18 don’t need passports.
I tweeted last July that Quebec license plates were everywhere. On the other hand, there were very few US license plates to be seen. Anecdotally, there are a lot more licenses plates from US states this year. I mean A LOT more. It isn’t back to the pre-9-11 days, but it is way higher than last year.
I know that the tourism industry is a lot more complicated than this, but based on these two simple observations, business should be better this year. Let’s hope so!
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Clinics needed to beat border confusion
From the Niagara Falls Review:
There’s still so much confusion about what travel documents are required for entering the United States from Canada, government agencies on both sides of the border should sponsor “clinics” to help people decide which type of identification meets their needs and even to help fill out application forms, the head of a tourism lobby group says.
“People are still confused. They want to know what they need. We think there’s a way to do that with community partners,” said Arlene White, director of the Binational Tourism Alliance, a lobby group focusing on issues that affect the tourism industry in Niagara and western New York.
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Audio of Canadian couple interrogated at US-Canada border
This is actual audio of a Canadian couple being interrogated at the United States/Canada borer. The couple was on their way to Niagara Falls outlet mall. At the end of the audio the couple was arrested and thrown in jail. Were the US border patrol just? What is your opinion?Tourism group expands scope
From the Buffalo News:
The Binational Tourism Alliance, with offices in Buffalo and Niagara Falls, Ont., is not a marketing group. Instead, it aims to break down barriers to tourism and cultural development. Arlene White, the executive director, said the border should not be an impediment, “just the way it doesn’t stop the Falls from being on one side or the other.”
This year’s summit will look at how other regions “reinvented” their economies through innovative manufacturing, tourism and cultural development during previous recessions or downturns.
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