VANCOUVER — Destination Canada’s (DC) latest Tourism Snapshot indicates tourism growth rebounded in April 2019, offsetting contractions seen in March due to the timing of Easter holidays. Arrivals for the month reached a new record high, with 1.36-million international overnight arrivals (up 19.1 per cent), resulting in year-to-date (YTD) growth of 4.4 per cent.
In April, Canada also saw new monthly-arrivals peaks from Mexico (up 102.3 per cent), China (up 1.4 per cent), France (up 12.8 per cent) and India (up 26.6 per cent). The same markets also set new arrivals records for the first four months of the year, as did Australia (up five per cent YTD).
With the Japanese Golden Week holiday period starting in late April, total arrivals from Japan for the month jumped to 17,000 — up 33.7 per cent.
Canada welcomed 900,000 visitors from the U.S. in April (up 16.4 per cent), offsetting the drop in March 2019 and bringing YTD arrivals from the U.S. back up ahead of 2018 levels (up 3.9 per cent).
Arrivals from China increased 1.4 per cent for April 2019, marking a new record peak. China also remains DC’s largest long-haul market YTD 2019.
Overall, South Korea was the one dark spot as the only DC market to experience a decline in arrivals for the month. Overnight arrivals from the market were down 23.9 per cent, resulting from a statistical revision on land-port data.
A year-over-year comparison of national hotel indicators were mixed, with occupancy for the month falling 0.2 percentage points. RevPAR and ADR were both up, climbing 3.2 per cent and 2.8 per cent, respectively.
The complete report is available here.
