With most tourist travel halted by the pandemic, Greater Victoria hospitality businesses have found a lifeline in weekend visitors from the Vancouver area. But now, they’re wondering if the provincial government is leaving an entire industry to perish with an order restricting travel in and out of the Lower Mainland.
Tourism-related businesses have “invested a lot of money, time, training in protocols and have done so successfully. And we have been doing decently — not well, but decently,” said Paul Nursey, chief executive of Destination Greater Victoria. “Mostly from weekend travel, from Vancouver primarily. Weekdays are dead but weekends have been OK.”
Everyone understands the importance of battling the virus, he said.
But operators are frustrated because “they’ve been bending over backwards to operate in a safe manner and pretty much our last remaining source of business is now taken away.”
The province has ordered that there be only essential travel in and out of the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley, where COVID-19 cases have been surging. At the same time, expected provincial relief for tourism businesses has not materialized, Nursey said.
He is calling on the province to consult with industry before bringing in new measures, and also to become more innovative.
“We see nothing at all about innovation … to try to move the business forward in any way, shape or form.”
He pointed to a pilot program at the Calgary airport allowing passengers who pass a COVID-19 screening test to quarantine for two days instead of 14.
“So the world is adapting and they are learning to innovate, and we don’t see any of that in B.C.”
The strategic question is, will government let the industry die, he said. “Are they just going to let it perish? Is our industry somehow less valuable and are the people that work in it somehow less valuable?” Nursey said.
Ian Tostenson, chief executive of the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association, said clarity is needed from the province around its latest restrictions.
“It’s really confusing right now for the restaurant industry because there has been several different messages that have been played out in the media.”
Differing messages around visiting restaurants have come from different officials, he said.
One restaurateur in Vancouver told him on Tuesday that he did not have one reservation for lunch. “They all cancelled.”
Premier John Horgan has acknowledged that tourism has been “absolutely rocked by COVID-19” as a direct result of people not travelling and that some businesses are calling for regional restrictions, but Horgan reiterated a “pan B.C.” approach to COVID-19 alongside a regional one over the next two weeks to try to bring down cases in the Lower Mainland.
The government will keep working with the tourism sector to help them through, but until travel resumes, the challenges for the tourism sector will remain, he said. “Everyone wants to survive through the winter and get into the spring and hopefully a vaccine and or therapies that will allow us to open our borders and have more people coming to British Columbia, but we are a long way from that today,” he said.
Horgan said he doesn’t want people to think because the most recent orders are focused on Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal “that that means that the Island and Interior, Northern health do not have to be vigilant when it comes to physical distancing, be vigilant when it comes to ensuring that people do not come to the workplace when they’re not feeling well enough to do so. All of those issues remain in place for all British Columbians.”
— with files from Cindy E. Harnett
cjwilson@timescolonist.com