Tuesday, July 14, 2009

1.2% of "nothing" equals nothing...

The following story is hardly worth talking about when you think about what impact this number may have on our tourism industry..... when you compare the number of tourists that travel by car to PEI against the number by air then I'd say the 1.2 % gain would hardly amount to an hour’s traffic on the bridge... I went to lunch today at the Urban Eatery and I couldn't help but notice that there were hardly any tourists in the mall. I then drove down Queen Street to attend a meeting on Water Street and I started looking at the license plates of the vehicles parked on Queen and if I had to guess I'd say 80% of them were Island cars and the bulk of the balance were shared between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. What was most striking was there were no U.S. vehicles in any of the parking stalls and as I drove back to the office I could hardly find a U. S. plate... I talked to a lot of tourist operators at the "concert" the other night and even though they were quite excited to see the concert's success they all tell me they are down 25 to 35% already... the golf operators tell me they are down about 20% and a lot of our local retailers are experiencing similar trends... thank God we had the "Big Break" otherwise we'd have nothing....
Traffic up at airport despite economic downturn
BY STAFF
The Guardian
Passenger traffic at the Charlottetown Airport was up 1.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, reports the Charlottetown Airport Authority. Year-to-date passenger traffic to the end of June is also up 3.3 per cent compared to the same period as last year. “We are pleased to see the traffic at the Charlottetown Airport is holding strong,” noted Airport CEO Doug Newson. “The economy has impacted air traffic both nationally and regionally, so it is encouraging to see positive year to date results for the Island.”

3 comments:

Golfer said...

I hope Mill River sold a large number of extra green fees to make up for the $800,000 spent on big break. That doesn't include all the extra money Minister MacKinley sunk into the course from TPW.

$800,000 to $1,000,000 is about 10,000 green fees right? Say 100 green fees per day at Mill River, that is like 100 days of golf extra the course would have to have in order to make up the cost of the Big Break.

Ouch.

Mark said...

We (from Mass.) have been on the island for 2 weeks already and haven't been into Ch'town yet (other than using the bypass road to get around the city). We are out there, but you might need to tool around in the Porsche a bit to Cavendish, Summerside, etc... to see some U.S. plates. I may hit that $14 all you can play golf course off TC1 near between Victoria and Cornwall sometime, at least its affordable...

Anonymous said...

I have heard that nurses from PEI are travelling to northern Manitoba to work -2weeks on, 2 week off. Along with the Alberta workers travelling would this not account for some of the increase? Apparently the new grad nurses are not able to find full time jobs here.