Douglas Magazine, September 30, 2011
Americans Still Travelling — Just Not to B.C.
The average person on the street likely has the impression that travel by Americans is trending down. Not so, says a local tourism industry consultant who's been crunching numbers supplied by U.S. and B.C. agencies.
Reasons for the reported decline in travel by Americans have been variously cited as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mad Cow Disease (BSE)/SARS, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), increasing gas costs, decreasing value of the U.S. dollar, the recession, competition from other destinations — or a combination of the above.
Frank Bourree and his team at Chemistry Consulting Group have undertaken an examination of general U.S. travel patterns over the past 10 years to answer the question: how many Americans are travelling and where are they going? To understand these patterns, they reviewed 10 years of data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation, the U.S. Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, and Tourism B.C., related to:
- U.S. domestic air traffic — all passengers (travel within the U.S.)
- Total U.S. citizen air traffic to all destinations (total travel outside the U.S.)
- U.S. citizen air traffic to overseas destinations, excluding Mexico and Canada
- U.S. citizen air traffic to Mexico and Canada
- U.S. visitors to B.C. same day and overnight — all modes of transportation
