21 MAY 2019: Discover America Canada’s recent meeting at the Old Mill in Toronto, was an opportunity to officially meet Brand USA’s brand new regional director for Canada, Colin Skerritt. Jackie Ennis, senior director, global trade development, introduced Skerritt, noting that he is the first Brand USA employee hired outside of the US, surely an indication of how important a source market Canada is to the US.
Skerritt who grew up in locally, was formerly director of Canada for the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority. Based in Toronto, his singular focus is to promote the US as a premier travel destination to Canadian travellers.
Just three weeks into his new position Skerritt said his focus on the travel trade side will be to build Brand USA’s trade relationships in Canada. However, with only three weeks at his new position, which he described as “a fantastic opportunity,” he said he is still working on a strategy and welcomes input from the trade.
“There is so much potential in the Canadian market,” Said Skerritt.
Jennifer Hendry, senior research associate, Canadian Tourism Research Institute, Conference Board of Canada, as always, provided an interesting outlook for travel trends and patterns to the US for Summer 2019.
We will cover the details of Hendry’s information at a later date, but in short she said economics play a huge factor in how the inbound travel market performs.
“Whether it’s through your personal economics your household economics or what happens in the country as a whole. Following the downturn in 2015 and 2016, the Canadian economy strengthened quite a bit in 2017 and grew at a pace of 3%. That helped boost base household income. It increased household spending and in turn boosted the Canadian dollar which then helped bolster outbound travel performance.
The landscape changed in 2018, said Hendry, GDP growth was more normal, but the economy advanced at just 1.8% and that has continued in 2019. The GDP is expected to be stagnate this year. The economists that she has worked with suggest that their last forecast which was around 1.4% has been reduced to about 1.2% growth next year.
Hendry suggested that the trade wars are causing a lot of uncertainty, along with issues of emerging markets, that are effecting household income as well as consumer spending.
“The good news is that job growth and wage growth are still good.” She said, “So, yes consumer spending has slowed, it slowed in the latter half of 2018. But it’s expected to pick up again in the latter half of 2019.”
Economics are a huge factor in how the inbound travel market performs. Whether it’s through your personal economics your household economics or what happens in the country as a whole. Following the downturn in 2015 and 2016, the Canadian economy strengthened quite a bit in 2017 and grew at a pace of 3%. That helped boost base household income. It increased household spending and in turn boosted the Canadian dollar which of course then helped bolster outbound travel performance.
Right now only one-fifth of travellers have booked their trips to the US, and she said the uncertainty that just 50% of travel to the US is still in the early stages of planning is a bit concerning
42% of all leisure travellers said that they were planning their longest trip this summer to the US. That, said Hendry, “is the lowest proportion we’ve seen in over a decade on this survey.”
However, air travel to the US is strong, with 10.1 million air seats available to the US this summer. But car travel across the border is weak. Unfortunately, more than half those questioned said that they will definitely not be travelling stateside this summer. Overall, the overnight travel by auto is expected to decline more significantly than the non-auto market.
And while the US travel market recovered somewhat in 2018, Hendry pointed to a range of issues – economic, political, demographic, etc. – as reasons that that recovery will be short-lived, observing that “US trip intentions are at their lowest point in a decade.”
The Toronto Star’s Ed Cassavoy, director of content strategy and partnerships also had some interesting points to make particularly regarding subscriptions for online content, making a case that serious content is worth the subscription without the inconvenience and irritation of ads popping up and floating by.
Cassavoy also stressed that the popularity of print news magazines and newspapers are steadily declining against online news content. It’s hard to wean clients off their love of seeing their brand/ad in actual hard copy – but in fact there is no surefire way to measure print where online technology can pretty well pinpoint any amount of precise measurable data.
Susan Webb, president of Discover America Canada, reminded the group of upcoming events, not the least of which is the always popular annual Canadian reception on June 2 at this year’s IPW in Anaheim.
Discover America Canada Day is scheduled for September 30 at Toronto’s Arcadian Court, and the annual US Thanksgiving Lunch will be held on Nov. 19 at the Chefs’ House at George Brown College in Toronto.