Flooding, wildfires, and even national media coverage of those two weather events, made for a rough tourism season for Kelowna businesses.
“We expected a much busier year just based on what we’ve seen over the last couple of years,” says Nicholas Wilson, owner of Wicked Wine Tours “Even the demand in the spring seemed to forecast that it was going to be very, very strong year.”
Instead, he was spending the summer talking to potential tourists, letting them know that Kelowna was safe and open for business.
“I can’t count the number of conversations I had with guests who called us inquiring as to whether they should cancel or whether or not they should come,” he said “In many cases it was us talking them out of cancelling.”
Wilson believes exaggerated reports of flooding and wildfires, especially in Alberta, where many tourists come from, contributed to visitors believing that either the city was under water or on fire.
Owner of SunWave Boat Rentals, Brian Crowley, says he too was constantly selling.
“You had to answer a lot of questions, you had to convince people that the flooding wasn’t as bad as potentially the news media had made it or the fires weren’t local.”
Being in the boating industry, Crowly says May and June- a time when boating on Okanagan Lake was discouraged because of record water levels- were especially bad, however smoky skies in July and August also made things challenging.
“The lack of tourists coming to town, the numbers down, you just didn’t have a chance to capitalize on what would be normally good boating weather,” he said.
Tourism Kelowna says it's hard to provide an exact amount, but they know that the high water levels in the spring and smoke in the summer affected revenues.
“It’s safe to say that 2017 has been challenging for tourism businesses in Kelowna and area,” says Chris Shauf, Director of Marketing and Communications “It’s important to note that despite these challenges, Tourism Kelowna continued to market our destination and provide important travel updates, and that local businesses remained open and delivered memorable experiences to visitors from far and wide.”
He says one tourism indicator they monitor is hotel occupancy, which through to the end of July remained close to that in 2016, a growth year.
Wilson said he knows of some hotels that weren’t fully booked during long weekends. AM1150 made calls to several hotels in Kelowna, however they were not returned.
With summer and the tourist season over, Crowley and Wilson are hoping for a better season in 2018.