Vancouverites’ pride in their city as a desirable destination for tourists suffered a blow when the municipality ranked poorly on several tourism-related indicators in the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade’s (GVBOT) 2018 economic scorecard.
The scorecard ranked Vancouver at No. 7 out of 20 cities from around the world based on 39 different metrics, including average office rent, unemployment rate and labour productivity. But the city received a D grade on tourism indicators, such as the total number of international visitors and the number of visitors at international-association conventions.
When it came to the number of flight destinations from the region’s major airport, Vancouver ranked 14th – a C grade. Vancouver got another C grade for its number of cruise ship calls, ranking ninth.
Comparing how the city stacks up against global competition provides a healthy reality check that should spark action on Vancouver tourism improvements by completing key infrastructure projects that have been in limbo for years.
Take, for example, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s (VAG) long-proposed move to a new facility on the southern two-thirds of the block bounded by Cambie, Dunsmuir, Beatty and Georgia streets.
B.C. Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Lisa Beare announced on June 17 $6 million to help fund a $30 million upgrade and expansion at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, but she had no cash for an expanded VAG. Beare told Business in Vancouver earlier this year that the Vancouver gallery needs to step up its independent fundraising efforts.
“The B.C. government is encouraging the VAG to demonstrate greater private donation support,” she said in January. “The current funding request must be considered within the context of other pressing government priorities.”
Metro Vancouver’s status as the largest city in North America to prohibit ride-hailing services such as Uber from operating is another potential tourism deterrent.
Premier John Horgan earlier this month backed away from his government’s promise to legalize ride-hailing services in the province by year’s end.
While the city is well known for its natural beauty, beaches and proximity to hiking or ski hills, critics could point out that the city lacks a major amusement park.
Jim Pattison Group owner Jim Pattison told BIV in April 2016 that he wanted to build a Great Wolf Lodge water park and resort near Squamish if he could work out a deal with the city and First Nations.
His company then floated the idea of building the $150 million park in Surrey, before putting the brakes on those plans.
He told BIV on June 20 that he has no plans to build the resort anywhere in B.C.
“We could not effectively make the numbers work,” he said.
City scholars and tourism advocates, however, doubt Metro Vancouver needs a large amusement park.
“There are other cities that don’t have a lot of natural assets that are trying to create something to attract people,” said urbanism consultant and Toderian UrbanWorks owner Brent Toderian.
“That’s the amusement-park scenario. That’s hard because they are competing with every other city with an amusement park.”
The former chief planner for the City of Vancouver praised Vancouver’s natural beauty and its network of bike lanes and accessible transit system that make it easy for tourists to get around the area without having to rent a car.
Vancouver also has the seawall, which the City of Vancouver describes as the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path.
“We’re not a city that desperately needs to manufacture something new because we don’t have something to offer,” concurred Tourism Vancouver CEO Ty Speer. “We’re the opposite. We have a very strong offering that is well aligned with what the city is all about.”
Speer took issue with some of the GVBOT scorecard’s data points.
The scorecard relied on data from Euromonitor International to determine that Vancouver received more than 2.2 million international visitors annually.
Speer pointed to Statistics Canada data showing more than 5.7 million people entered Canada through B.C. last year, and he suggested that the lion’s share of those people visited Vancouver.
He added that data on how many people visited Vancouver for an international association’s conference was also suspect because those numbers are “self-reported” to the International Congress and Convention Association.
“We had a fantastic year in 2017,” he said. “We had the best-ever year in 2016, in terms of meetings and conventions, and we’ll have a year in 2018 that is superior to both of those.”
Evi Mustel, who chaired the GVBOT’s scorecard committee, said she recognized the challenges in finding comparable data, but noted the committee found comparable data on these metrics for all 20 cities.
“We’ve had healthy growth in tourism but tourism numbers are up worldwide,” she said.
Still, selecting exactly what metrics to include in the report was subjective.
The scorecard, for example, gave Vancouver a C grade because its airport’s tally of non-stop flights to 125 destinations is nearly 100 destinations short of the total for similarly sized Manchester, England.
Anne Murray, the Vancouver Airport Authority’s vice-president of airline business development and public affairs, noted Manchester has many more possible destinations within a short flying time than Vancouver does.
“If you think of Manchester, think of the population of the U.K. or the population of Europe or what the population would be within three hours’ flying time,” Murray said.
She added that international bilateral agreements can also limit which destinations certain airlines are eligible to service, and how frequently.
“[Canada’s] air agreement with China is like a trade agreement between countries,” she explained. “They allow a certain number of weekly [flight] frequencies for Chinese-based airlines to Canada, and those are all used right now. So we have [Chinese] airlines that would like to add additional frequencies and they cannot because there are no additional frequencies left on the China side.”
One metric that could have boosted Vancouver’s showing in the Scorecard was the quality of its airport.
In March, Vancouver International Airport ranked as North America’s best airport for a ninth straight year, according to Skytrax. Those rankings were not part of GVBOT’s scorecard, but Mustel said they might be added to the next one, which is to be drafted in 2020.
“We should look into seeing if we can incorporate that,” she said. “That ranking takes in many different aspects of the airport.” •
