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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EDITORIAL — Reducing passport prices would aid tourism industry
From the Niagara Falls Review:
Ontario’s tourism industry, particularly in Niagara, has been in one long struggle for the better part of the last decade.
Ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, border security in the United States has been an ongoing concern; a byproduct of that has been fewer American visitors heading north.
That scenario was magnified last year when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented its Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, making a passport a necessity if you plan on crossing the border — or more to the point, if you want to enter the United States.
That means any American without a passport can get out of their homeland, but they can’t get back in.
And because fewer than one in three Americans owns a passport, that has manifested in plummeting tourism numbers.
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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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Niagara Falls aquarium plan sunk?
From the Niagara Falls Review:
Plans to build an aquarium in Niagara Falls appear to be a casualty of tougher American travel regulations, now that Ripley Entertainment is gearing up to build one at the base of Toronto’s CN Tower.
Canada Lands Company, which owns the CN Tower, picked Ripley last year as its partner to develop three acres of unused property near the base of Canada’s tallest building.
Ripley had plans for years to build an aquarium near Great Wolf Lodge, a resort also owned by Florida-based Ripley Entertainment, the company famous for its Believe it Or Not attractions. But in 2007, the company shelved those plans.
That’s when tourism operators got nervous about the effect the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative would have on the number of Americans visiting Canada. That rule requiring American citizens and foreigners to show a passport or other secure document when entering the U.S., came into effect in 2009.
“The one at Great Wolf Lodge has been put on hold for right now. It’s still on hold. It’s still on hold for exactly the same reasons,” said Ripley spokesman Tim O’Brien.
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