Many of New Brunswick’s main tourism attractions suffered a significant downturn last year, so much so that a local mayor is calling on the province to start marketing cool coastal areas as a place to go to beat global warming.
Published in the provincial government’s annual Tourism Indicators report, the list shows that among the dozen top attraction visits, six of them showed fewer or only a modest increase in visitors in 2023.
More alarmingly, of the top five attractions, three showed big declines: Fundy National Park had 218,021 visitors (a loss of 7% over 2022), Hopewell Rocks, 201,273 visitors (-11%) and the Fundy Trail, 56,115 visitors (-11%).
Kouchibouguac National Park barely held its own, with 146,071 visitors (virtually no change over 2022).
The only standout was Roosevelt Campobello International Park, whose visitor total of 180,692 in 2023 represented a 22% increase over the previous year. However, it is also an anomaly on the list because it is run by a joint, six-member commission of Americans and Canadian officials, and funded by Washington and Ottawa.
One mayor said it was time for the provincial government to market the area the same way it was celebrated in the late 19th and early 20th century, before air conditioning was widely used and hordes of wealthy Americans travelled up to beat the heat in the sweltering summers.
“This is just my opinion, but climate change could help our area,” said James Bedford, the mayor of Fundy-St. Martins, when asked what could help increase traffic to his coastal community, which includes the Fundy Trail.
“When you’re inland and it hits 37 or 40 degrees Celsius, and you come down along the coast, it’s about 10 degrees cooler. So that could drive a lot of people into our area. I noticed that’s a big thing. People want to come down on the beach to get cooler.
“We’ve even had people say, ‘we appreciate the fog.’ As locals we don’t like the fog and we take it for granted, but others say, ‘no, we like this, it’s cool air.’”
Bedford said tourism operators in St. Martins had noticed a slow start to this year’s season, but the campgrounds are beginning to fill up and lines for lobster rolls are getting longer.
He’s also hopeful the Fundy Trail will see more traffic. This is the first time in 26 years the trail and parkway, with its stunning vistas, steep trails and pristine beaches, is being run as a provincial park, after the Fundy Trail Authority relinquished control last December.
Few operators are reporting as good business as pre-pandemic, with 2019 a banner year, followed by the 2020 bust and the slow crawl out of the health and travel restrictions that made vacationing difficult.
Jordan Jamison, president of the St. Martins and District Chamber of Commerce, believes there are some low-hanging fruit that’s ripe for the picking.
“For instance, the Fundy Trail is now a provincial park. And that’s great. But if you go to Alma, on the eastern side, there are no signs encouraging you to go to St. Martins. The village as a whole sees a third of the visitors that Fundy National Park gets, just on the other side of the parkway. Only one third. How is that possible, if Fundy and the parkway are such a huge draw, with St. Martins on the other end? We need to market better.”
Jamison has run Bay of Fundy Adventures, a kayaking and hiking firm, and Shipyard Café in the heart of the village for a decade. He said his business went way down last year, but he blamed much of it on the weather. As much of the rest of Canada burned – the country suffered its worst forest fire season ever, with smoke and poor air quality in many places a big health hazard – New Brunswick had a lot of rain in 2023.
That’s reflected in the numbers for the top indoor attraction, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, which had the biggest increase in visitors last year, 12,862, a hike of nearly 50%.
“Last year we didn’t have a nice weekend till the first weekend of August,” Jamison said. “We couldn’t buy a nice day out here. And people just weren’t as interested in going outdoors. Our numbers plummeted.”
The good part is his pre-season bookings this year were higher than ever, and he’s confident business will be on the upswing.
He said the provincial government should continue in its marketing to focus on local operators that can offer visitors special experiences, not just take them to see sites.
“We have tons of stories to tell,” he said. “The province is doing better with this, but it could be improved. And we’re happy to help them, if they’re willing to help us.”
Annick Robichaud Butland, co-president of the Albert County Chamber of Commerce, said the drop in numbers at Hopewell Rocks couldn’t just be dismissed as weather-related. As the former group tour manager at the iconic site on the Bay of Fundy, she knows that about seven out of every 10 of its visitors are from outside the Maritimes, including visitors from Europe and Asia.
She, like Jamison, recommended the provincial government keep focusing on experiential visits in its marketing, including catering to visitors who want to lessen their environmental footprint and support small, local businesses.
“Albert County offers that tenfold. If you want to have lobster on the beach, you can. If you want to talk to a local artist and see pottery in their shop, you can.”
Working in tourism for close to two decades – including stints as managing director of Cape Enrage and an employee at Fundy Park – Robichaud Butland now runs ABConnect Travel, offering specialized, custom tours all over the Maritimes for individuals, families and groups.
“The province needs to listen to community sentiment. I lived in Hopewell Cape for six years, so I know what it’s like to be stuck behind a motorhome convoy,” she said, laughing.
Parking, good roads, and preserving historic features in local communities is important, she said. And she also cautioned the province not to put its eggs all in one basket. Hopewell Rocks, for instance, has a capacity of about 300,000 visitors a year. Any more, she said, and it will become an unfun experience for many.
If anyone can survive in tourism, she can. Her business started in November 2019 – only four months before COVID-19 spread to New Brunswick in March 2020.
“Our team adapted. I redesigned our website three times in the first year and a half. That was expensive, to shift from international travel, because it wasn’t allowed. But we developed stay-cations.”