A survey of Indigenous tourism operators, done by the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC), has led to early indications of the fears that firms are having about the impacts of tariffs on their businesses.

The survey, which was launched on Jan. 23, and had a high overnight response rate from Alberta based operators, has resulted in some early indications of thoughts within the industry.

Brenda Holder, Vice-Chair for ITAC, said that although the survey is still ongoing and more results will be coming in, the preliminary results show that the tariffs are believed to lead to higher prices for tourism operators, and lower demand from American visitors.

“From my understanding, most of the responses so far have come from Alberta. So the total survey results, of course, are pending,” she said.

From eight operators in Alberta, the majority she said indicated that between 11 to 15 per cent of their business comes from the US. All of the businesses recognized that there would likely be impacts to market demand, and decreased cross border tourism.

“Six of the eight businesses have indicated concern that the US tourists will reduce their travel to Canada because of higher costs. Six of the eight businesses have indicated that they would likely have to increase prices to offset increase costs of goods and services due to the tariff. Those same six businesses have indicated that an increase in pricing will have impact on the customer demand of their experiences,” said Holder.

“All of these eight businesses have indicated that this will have a moderate to significant impact on their business.”

She said there was still a great deal of uncertainty on the precise impact tourism tariffs would have on the industry.

“I think we also have to be cognitive of the fact that within the tourism industry, we have to pivot all the time. There are things that will happen external to us, and sometimes we can see them as as a challenge, but we also have opportunities out of those to try and take advantage of different situations,” she said.

“It’s difficult to pivot, and some businesses rely specifically on certain segments of the market to ensure their business thrives, but sometimes they won’t always have that opportunity. So we do have to learn how to pivot.”

The result was that there would need to be a greater push for other international visitors outside of the US to visit Canada, and to encourage more domestic tourism to Calgary and area, Holder said.

Tourism tariffs impact likely largest to business travellers

Of the broadly three different groups of visitors to the city—leisure, visiting, and corporate travel—the latter is most likely to be impacted by tariff threats said Sol Zia, Executive Director of the Calgary Hotels Association.

“We are registering some instability in corporate travel. Business travel might be one where we’re keeping an eye on it, and we’re going to talk to the hotels to understand any implications for corporate. But from what we know right now, large segments of the business don’t appear to have any anything that’s that can be sniffed out to impact,” Zia said.

“But corporate is one to keep an eye on. Business travel is, of course, important to major market like Calgary. A lot of the business going on across borders is around contracts and development, and those things are always susceptible to periods of instability.”

He said that the impacts of a weaker Canadian dollar though—at 70 cents USD and 67 cents against the Euro as of Jan. 23—doesn’t necessarily mean terrible things for Calgary’s visitor economy.

“That dollar difference, as much as it might hurt everyday Canadians, a lower loonie actually supports travel. There’s three factors. Canadians will tend to stay in country more, and we’ve become a magnet to folks from Europe, Asia and the United States,” Zia said.

“You have this compounding effect of people staying home, not going to destinations outside of our country, and then being a major magnet based on currency differential for all those markets. It’s actually, if it wasn’t a period of political instability, it would be a boon for our market this year.”

Alisha Reynolds, CEO for Tourism Calgary, said that Calgary is expecting to see a record number of visitors this year.

“We look at the Conference Board of Canada statistics, and we’re forecasting 8.7 million visitors to experience Calgary and area this year, and we’re looking forward to continuing to set records,” Reynolds said.

She said that there was a major focus on a national Canadian tourism strategy this year, given that dollar difference, and that the push would be to get more Canadians to visit Calgary as a result.

The impact from tariffs to other parts of Calgary’s economy, like culture, film and television, were also said by industry leaders to be unclear but unlikely to be as significant as in manufacturing, energy, and agricultural sectors.