Happy Tourism Week!
Prior to COVID-19, 225,000 businesses operated in Canada’s Tourism Sector employing 1.8 million Canadians and serving over 21 million visitors.
Tourism was one of the fastest-growing industries in the world – but now it will be one of the last to recover.
Our industry was among the first to be crippled by COVID-19 as borders closed, flights cancelled, restrictions on gatherings and non-essential travel were put in place. It’s anticipated that Tourism will be among the last industries to recover. But we will be resilient and find a way to operate safely and sustainably.
With Alberta’s economy gradually and cautiously reopening in the COVID-19 era, the tourism sector is preparing to open our doors and welcome back guests. Notwithstanding the considerable challenges and restrictions impacting our operations, we will all find a way to tap dance in quicksand to safely get our teams working again to do what we do best – welcome visitors with warm western hospitality.
Hotel Arts Kensington will reopen on June 4th and Hotel Arts Downtown Calgary will reopen on June 18th. Occupancies may be low initially as our markets will be restricted to Alberta and our neighbouring provinces. Until corporations lift their “travel bans”, we anticipate a trickle of business travel. Similarly, meetings and events business will be limited until group restrictions are lifted. Our efforts will be focused, but not limited, to finding novel ways to create wonderful “staycations” for Calgarians to experience while we collaborate with our tourism partners to make a compelling case for our neighbours to hop in their vehicles (or on their bikes) to Visit Calgary. There is so much to see and do in our wonderful city and surroundings. We hope to have the pleasure of hosting visitors that choose to use our boutique hotels as their home base for a Calgary experience.
Our restaurants, Yellow Door Bistro and Oxbow, will reopen on June 4th adhering to health and physical distancing protocols and at 50% capacity. New menus and hours of operation are forthcoming, and we are excited to share them shortly. While the traditional concept of the brunch buffet will disappear in the COVID-19 era, we have come up with safe, innovative and delicious multi-course weekend “Tabletop Buffets” for our guests to enjoy at both restaurants.
Once we remove our winter inflatable shelter over the poolside patio, we will reopen our Poolside by Hotel Arts for licensed dining. The pool, however, will not be open for swimming until the government restrictions are lifted on public pools and fitness facilities. Despite the changes, we will still have a unique and lovely poolside oasis to share with our guests.
This past week, we were able to hire back some of our artisans thanks to the Federal Wage Subsidy Program. Seeing the smiles (when not covered up by masks) of our artisans was the fuel I needed for a nearly depleted tank. I have always fed off their energies and enthusiasm. When our workforce crumbled from 260 artisans in March to 6 staff in mid-April, those were the worst in my 30+ years working in the hospitality & tourism industries. My energies were focused on ways to get them working again. We are making progress but we still have a long road ahead to get our teams back in place and our business operating again in a way to cover all our considerable fixed and variable costs. Things won’t improve overnight but we’re on steadier footing to make gradual forward progress.
I am not naive to the massive challenge facing our economy, the tourism sector, and the businesses we love to operate. But I know that our team is resilient, we have amazing partners in tourism that we will collaborate with, and we have amazing guests that believe in us.
Better days lie ahead…we don’t have to squint as hard to see over the horizon of the flattening curve. We do, however, need to remain vigilant about curbing the spread of infection by taking all the right measures to ensure guest and worker safety. We also need to rally behind and support our neighbours as we address the economic hurdle ahead of us.
#SupportLocal #LoveYYC #TourismMatters
Yours in hospitality,
Fraser Abbott | Director of Business Development | Hotel Arts Group
