Tourism woes in Yarmouth County

The tourism picture, as pointed out in our front page story in the Yarmouth Vanguard (also in the Yarmouth County section of NovaNewsNow: Yarmouth experiencing worst tourism season since 1990) is not a pretty one.

In fact it’s a dismal one.

Throughout the community we hear stories about tourism that indicate anyone relying on tourism dollars to earn a living might soon be better off finding another occupation.

It’s that bad.

We have heard from people in the industry who say they’ve never seen anything like it.

It’s easy to believe them when you walk around Yarmouth and look at the vehicles leaving town almost the minute they get off the Cat ferry.

The ferry schedule is one of the things tourism operators quickly point to as hurting the area. That’s certainly true but the operators of the ferry service are also businesspeople and they have to do what they need to do to ensure their business grows. If their customers are calling for a specific schedule they have to provide it.

Yes, the ferry schedule hurts, but we cannot expect our industry to grow only by keeping people captive in the area awaiting it’s departure.

For decades now we have heard concerned people say we have to be a destination, not just a gateway to the province.

But what has really been done over those years to make Yarmouth a destination?

As stated before in this corner, you need not travel far to see what other communities do to make their towns more appealing to the travelling public.

The tourism industry is one that sees global competition, and it should be incumbent upon the people directly inviolved to “borrow” whatever good ideas other places have and incorporate them into our community.

Make no mistake, there is no quick fix to this problem.

What’s needed is a well-thought out plan, a sprucing up of the area and some tourist-friendly assistance.

When we were in effect closing the doors on the tourists, that word spread around and no doubt prompted them to go somewhere where they could get something besides pizza late at night.

Some places realize that tourists unfamiliar with an area want and need a lot of signage. It helps the, and we should all be helping visitors. Some other places have signs saying “potter ahead” or “artist’s studio ahead” for example.

This area is so fixated on enforcing signage bylaws that we have entire businesses that close (think Burton Avenue) in part because they’re not permitted to tell people a couple hundred feet from one of the province’s busiest streets that they’re open. How many tax dollars have we lost because of that move?

Like we said before, some places understand tourists bring pets so they put out water for the dogs---we instead, debate banning dogs from the Main Street. Some places have dispensers offering bags so people can more easily pick up after your pets. We instead arm people with cameras and hope they’ll take photographic evidence of dog bowel movements so we can bring them to court.

Get the picture?

It’s time we started to realize that if we want things to work around here we have to change how we think. Because the tourists have already changed their thinking and have moved on.