While staycations are an encouraging way to get people to travel around the province and experience something new, the chair of Hospitality NL says it certainly hasn’t been a fix for the tourism industry.
Steve Denty says he had no illusions that this would be a normal year.
He conveys that pockets of the province are seeing more traffic than others, but the tough part is that some regions are very dependent on tourists.
Denty states that the challenge is there is such a short window for the true tourist season and not having the traditional vacationers who would be spending about two or three times as much money is having a big impact.
He says his hope is to get people back to work, which means having more travelers move around our province. The first logical step was staycations, then joining the Atlantic Bubble. The next step Denty says is to have Canadians travel around the entire country.
Denty adds that COVID is not going away, and we need to learn how to travel safely in this environment.