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Toronto may get cold, but the area remains a red-hot magnet for tourists, with record numbers spending almost $9 billion here last year, according to figures to be released Wednesday.
The 2017 results “show consistent growth across virtually all the markets over a five- to seven-year period,” said Andrew Weir, executive vice-president of industry association Tourism Toronto, in an interview. “For the U.S. this is our seventh straight year of growth, and the international markets have been growing steadily since the global recession around 2008-2009.”
Some 43.7 million people descended on the census area that includes Toronto and parts of the region around it, more than one-third of them staying overnight, spending a total of $8.84 billion.
That total spend is up 47 per cent in the past five years, while the number of visitors rose 17 per cent in the same period.
Not only has tourism rebounded, and then some, but the pre-recession boom of U.S. visitors driving north for a Blue Jays game or performance of Les Misérables has been replaced by bigger-spending jetsetters.
“Of our American visitors here this year more than 70 per cent arrived by plane, and that’s a dramatic shift from 50/50 before the year 2000,” Weir said.
“That’s important because people who fly here stay longer, do more — they’re not popping up out of convenience but are making a purposeful trip to Toronto. Secondly, air travelers are more immune to currency fluctuations than people who drive from Buffalo or Detroit, so our foundation is strong.”
Almost 3 million tourists were overnight visitors from the U.S. The next most popular starting points were, in order, China, United Kingdom and India. But Toronto scored its biggest one-year increase from Mexico, a 72-per-cent jump from 44,000 to 75,000 visitors.
The obvious reason is that Canada in December 2016 scrapped a seven-year-old requirement for Mexicans to get visitor visas.
Another factor is likely at play, Weir says, and he lives in the White House.
“At the same time as the visa change, Mexicans were given a pretty clear reason not to travel to the U.S.,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump’s anti-Mexico rhetoric. “So the opportunity for Canada and Toronto to express a sense of welcome and an invitation to Mexican travelers was perfectly timed, and it’s not a surprise that we’re seeing this kind of massive growth.”
So why are people flocking to a city once viewed internationally as a lower-tier destination, nice but far from sexy?
A bunch of factors together have made the city hip and hot, Weir says. They include superstar Drake rapping about his hometown, multiple pro sports teams grabbing headlines, a reputation as a food mecca, the film industry showcased by TIFF and a booming tech sector that has Google sister company Sidewalk Labs hoping to reinvent urban life here.
Underscoring that is cultural diversity, openness to internationalism and an emphasis on urbanism.
“There is something exciting percolating that has captured international attention,” Weir said. “The cumulative weight of all these things happening at the same time is really driving our profile.
“Canada is having a profound moment right now and Toronto is the major urban centre of that country, so we are leveraging Canada’s strength and positioning Toronto as Canada’s downtown... We have our issues but are increasingly seen as a modern, progressive, idealistic place. In some places Toronto is viewed as an ideal for what a city can and should be.”
Convention business also remains strong, with Toronto attracting massive gatherings including more than 20,000 Rotarians expected in June.
The new figures aren’t all cheery. Fewer visitors arrived in 2017 from the U.K., Japan, Germany, Australia and Netherlands. Tourism from all those countries is, however, up over levels from five years ago — in some cases dramatically so.
Domestic travellers continue to visit Toronto more than any other Canadian city. Toronto welcomed 10.4 million overnight domestic visitors, spending $2.6 billion in 2017.
