Nunavut’s travel industry had a $823.5 million output and supported 6,322 jobs in 2024, an “impressive” result that shows that travel is increasingly becoming big business in the territory.
“We’re really happy with the results from the study. I think they show great promise and show that the travel industry is really, really strong,” said Alex Stubbing, president and CEO of Travel Nunavut, in an interview.
Commissioned by Travel Nunavut, the purpose of the study was to find out the economic impact of Nunavut’s travel industry.
“We’re really happy with the results from the study. I think they show great promise and show that the travel industry is really, really strong,” said Alex Stubbing, president and CEO of Travel Nunavut, in an interview.
A 2019 report put the travel sector’s impact at $400 million, and responsible for 3,000 jobs. But previous assessments of the economic impact of travel in Nunavut were “guesstimates,” Stubbing said. Numbers in this latest study are the “first figures that have come from actual research and data collection, so these are going to act as baseline figures.”
Travel Nunavut hired the firm Praxis Consulting, which collected data from Statistics Canada and through interviews with people involved in the travel sector, Stubbing said.
Some of the other dollar figures in the study include $461.3 million in gross domestic product, $333.9 million in labour income, $82.2 million in federal tax revenue and $49.9 million in territorial tax revenue.
When examining travel, it’s not just tourism that adds value to Nunavut’s economy, Stubbing said. Medical, business and scientific travel all contribute.
“When you start to explain the breadth of the travel industry, people then start to understand and think, ‘Oh yeah… those figures definitely make sense,’” Stubbing said.
“[The $823.5-million impact is] a really impressive figure, and from what we can tell, that puts the travel industry as the second biggest industry in the territory outside of the mining activity.”
Of the 6,322 jobs figure, Travel Nunavut describes 5,408 of them as “direct positions.”
Examples of those jobs, Stubbing said, include pilots, hotel desk workers and cooks, and outfitting guides. The study didn’t offer a breakdown of how many of those roles went to Inuit or locals.
“When we go to do this same study in years future,” Stubbing said, “that’s definitely the type of thing that we’re going to try and gather information about.”
At Travel Nunavut’s 2023 annual general meeting, officials mused over the potential of travel in Nunavut being a $1-billion industry by 2030. Half-way through the decade, Nunavut could reach that goal sooner than expected.
“There’s so much going on in the territory and so much growth happening in the territory that it’s hard to believe that we wouldn’t get to $1 billion by 2030,” Stubbing said.
For continued stability and growth, Stubbing called for infrastructure improvements such as paved runways, and financial support for hotels and local tourism companies.
“The travel industry supports businesses and jobs in every community in Nunavut, so it’s a very sustainable industry,” he said.
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