Tourism math and money mean a lot

You may not appreciate the value of the tourist dollar until you start spending your own.

Add it up: a cottage rental, hotel stay or tent site; gas to get to and fro; theme park fees; museum admissions; car snacks and, most often, food, food, food.

Perhaps you work in a bank, a dental office or hospital cafeteria, where tourists’ license plates, accents and search for something to do don’t affect daily work. If you’re a restaurant, zoo, campground, festival planning committee, theme park or winery looking to tempt tastebuds with a bottle or two for the trunk, you want those tourists to affect your daily work in a big way, every day possible.

At one recent stop at the Fort Point Lighthouse Park in Liverpool, attendants were quick to ask for visitors’ signatures in the guest book. Those names and numbers add up to next year’s grants for programs and staff. However, they’re not adding up at all this summer.

With a two per cent decrease in visitors to Nova Scotia in June 2008 over June 2007 - compounding falling stats in past months and years in many areas of Nova Scotia - and 14 per cent fewer American visitors in that same period, tourism math and money mean a great deal.

That’s why Friday’s investment in the Digby/Saint John ferry is good news. A federal $11.1 million pledge along with $2 million each from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick will keep the beleaguered Bay of Fundy service going through to Jan. 31, 2011. In the meantime, ACOA will do a $1 million assessment of “commercial transportation alternatives and economic strategies, should the ferry service be discontinued in the future,” ACOA minister Peter MacKay said.

Not much in there about tourism impacts, but ask South Shore and Yarmouth-area businesses linked to that money what changes to the ferry schedule to Portland and Bar Harbour have meant in recent years: in 2002, 96,000 people passed through the Yarmouth ferry terminal. In 2003, the number dropped to 84,300; in 2004, a further drop to 76,000; in 2005, down to 54,300; and, in 2006, just 43,900. Then throw in the continuing decline in the number of U.S. visitors to Canada since 2001, confusing passport requirements, a high Canadian dollar and soaring gas prices.

Valley businesses canvassed in the past year as likely users of the Digby ferry - seafood shippers, trucking companies - haven’t been overly concerned about the potential loss of service. Municipal units have been asked by Digby officials to send along letters of support. Easy to do, but crucial when you consider the natural tendency of Saint John-to-Digby travelers to drive east on through to Halifax. No ferry, no eastern traffic; they’ll all come in through New Brunswick or Yarmouth, heading up the South Shore (in a trickle).

The Central Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce is taking two motions to the Atlantic chamber meetings for endorsement: keep the ferry and replace the boat itself with an efficient model.

The Eastern Kings Chamber of Commerce, on the other hand and at the other end of the Valley, is calling loudly for Highway 101 twinning west. With nothing beyond the proposed Coldbrook twinning, people, places and their products in southwestern Nova Scotia need a Bay of Fundy waterway to the world.