Canadian travel industry leaders are calling on the federal government to boost funding for tourism marketing to slow the steady decline in U.S. tourist visits to Canada.

Randy Williams, president of the Ottawa-based advocacy group Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), says it wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government to invest another $100 million in the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC).

If it does, TIAC members - which include provincial, territorial and regional tourism associations - will match the investment, bringing the total cash injection to $200 million.

"We just don't have enough (federal) money to change the perceptions of Americans about Canada," says Williams, adding the proposed $200-million investment will spur an additional $2.3 billion in tourism sales, and generate another $600 million worth of tax revenue.

Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Council of Tourism Associations of British Columbia CEO Mary Mahon Jones says increasing investment is crucial.

The federally funded CTC promotes Canada abroad in conjunction with provincial and municipal tourism associations.

Its funding has declined 12 per cent to $85 million from $75 million in the last three years.

American visits to Canada have declined every year over the last five years, falling 20 per cent in that period, he adds.

Williams and other industry leaders say Canada is losing U.S. and international market share because the CTC's counterparts in other countries, such as Australia and the U.S., allocate more funds to tourism marketing.

The Council of Tourism Associations of British Columbia (COTA) is echoing the call to boost CTC funding.

"The global marketplace is extremely expensive," says COTA CEO Mary Mahon Jones. "Canada needs to be out there with as many resources as (the CTC) can possibly extend."

Mahon Jones says the U.S. market is in a steady decline while the Asia-Pacific markets need to be targeted by increased investment in tourism marketing.

"We're going one way and the rest of the world is increasing their investment," adds Williams. "Our (marketing) message is just getting diluted. It's already weak."

Don Boynton, a spokesman for Travel Alberta, the province's tourism marketing and industry development organization, says his group's funding - based entirely on a four-per- cent levy on hotel reservations - is rising faster than the CTC's budget.

"The prospect is that we may have more funding than our national destination-marketing organization," says Boynton. "It's been well documented that Canada needs a well-funded destination-marketing organization. We'd prefer that as a partner (with the CTC.) We'd prefer a more secure and better-funded national organization."

But Canadian Tourism Commission spokeswoman Laura Fairweather defends her commission's perceived lack of funding. She adds her group's biggest challenge is to get the tourism industry "speaking together" on marketing projects.

"On every project we do in the U.S. market, we partner with someone - that's our mandate," she says, adding the commission partners with different groups on all international tourism projects.

The CTC has allocated $28 million on marketing to U.S. tourists this year as it trumpets its "Canada. Keep Exploring" slogan. Most U.S.-directed dollars - 66 per cent - are aimed at the "high-yield" Boston, New York and Los Angeles markets.

The CTC has also launched a pilot project aimed at Chicago residents, which is based largely on an e-mail campaign.

"We are trying to develop a more one-to-one relationship with travellers," says Fairweather.

She says the CTC's study on American leisure travel, released in March of 2006, indicates the commission's strategy is on target. But a recent Statistics Canada study shows American overnight visits to Canada fell to 3.4 million - the fewest in eight years - in the first quarter of this year. The second quarter saw only a slight improvement to 3.5 million overnight stays.

According to the CTC study, conducted by U.S.-based research firm D.K. Shifflet and Associates Ltd., most Americans who have never visited Canada are more likely to head to the Caribbean or Europe instead.

U.S. residents who have already visited Canada are more likely to consider visiting Canada again - 92 per cent of American visitors come back, says Fairweather. But repeat visitors only represent 23 per cent of the U.S. outbound market.

Canada's tourism operators are struggling to offset the repercussions of a variety of issues, including the rising Canadian dollar, confusion over travel documents U.S. passengers will need to enter the country, border lineups, the high price of gas, Canada's position on Iraq, trade disputes and terrorist threats.

According to TIAC, most of Canada's 200,000 tourism operators are small to medium-sized firms.

TIAC is also calling for all provinces and territories to adopt a hotel tax and share proceeds with the tourism industry for marketing purposes. B.C., Alberta and Quebec are the only provinces that require hotels to collect room taxes.

Under the system, the hotels also collect additional taxes for their municipal and regional governments so they can fund local travel marketing groups.

"We believe the room tax is the right way to (raise money for promotions) as long as the room tax goes to marketing," says Williams.

Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Territories do not have hotel taxes, while the Ontario government lets cities opt out of its tax if they want to.

COTA's Mahon Jones says B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's government has greatly increased its investment in tourism promotion by enabling provincial, regional and local marketing bodies to access more marketing funds through hotel-tax revenues or direct grants.

"This will greatly increase these bodies' ability to identify and target lucrative high-yield markets for the industry," she says. "It's up to the industry to ensure that the best practices are in place to ensure accountability and most effective use of the funds."

Alberta's four-per-cent "tourism levy"generates $48.3 million.

The levy, formerly known as the five-per-cent hotel tax, does not apply to rooms occupied continuously for 28 days or establishments with fewer than four bedrooms.

All but $6.9 million of Travel Alberta's budget goes toward marketing. The rest is spent on tourism industry development and support.

The Ontario government spends $32 million on tourism marketing, says Williams, but most of the money comes from public sources rather than the user-pay models prevalent in other large provinces.

He says B.C., Alberta and Quebec are the best in the country at structuring their tourism sectors and investing in marketing.

Despite the decline in overall U.S. visits to Canada, COTA's Mahon Jones and Travel Alberta's Boynton say early results indicate U.S. tourist visits to the two western provinces are up this summer.

"With some exceptions, most of our regions are reporting in on a good summer of tourism," says Mahon Jones. "This could be in part due to our beautiful weather, and also due to growth in other markets, such as the Asia Pacific and the (European Union)."

In the first six months of this year, American direct visits to Alberta fell 2.7 per cent compared to 4.3 per cent nationally, based on Statistics Canada figures, says Boynton.

Year-over-year direct visits to Alberta are only down 1.3 per cent.

"We're weathering the storm," he says.

Stephen Pearce, Tourism Vancouver's vice-president of leisure travel and destination management, says the group is moving its U.S. marketing dollars closer to home this year by concentrating on nearby regions.

Tourism Vancouver is also placing more emphasis on its consumer campaign, which targets tourists who book their own trips rather than going through a travel agent or tour company.

As a result, he says Vancouver's U.S. consumer traffic, from Seattle in particular, has jumped 62 per cent this year. But fewer Americans are leaving from Vancouver on their cruises to Alaska.

He says civic and provincial travel associations have to work together and "cut through the clutter of messages with a strong Canadian message."

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)