Explore Waterloo Region provides report on state of tourism

The state of tourism is looking positive according to the CEO of Explore Waterloo Region.

Michele Saran delivered a presentation at an All Councils Meeting Friday afternoon. The first good sign is that there is a rising trend of hotel occupancy in the region. We’re officially back to pre-pandemic levels.

“When we’re looking at 2023, for the first quarter, we’re either matching or beating 2018 and 2019 levels,” said Saran. “All indicators are that our region is doing quite well.”

Saran added that it takes about 18 months to get visitation numbers from Statistics Canada, (five million people visited Waterloo Region in 2019, the year unaffected by COVID-19), but they can use other figures like hotel room revenue to determine whether people are visiting the area. Those numbers also point towards a bounce back year for tourism.

There’s a breakdown in the report from 2019 showing what reason people had for visiting the region. The primary reason for travel was to visit friends or relatives (58%), followed by business (16%), then pleasure (12%) and shopping (7%).

Saran is encouraged by the amount of people coming to enjoy their time here.

“We’re looking at that as an opportunity for experience and product development to encourage people to come from farther away, so they stay longer and they spend more. The idea is to get them to stay in hotels and experience all the region has to offer.”

The presentation to council also outlined some accomplishments and priorities for Explore Waterloo Region and some risks to success of tourism in Waterloo Region as well. It includes recession, travel disruptions, labour shortages, global conflict and inflation.

You can view the full report here.