Thompson-Okanagan tourism numbers starting to climb again after devastating drop in April

When B.C. put COVID-19 restrictions in place on March 18, overnight visits to the Thompson-Okanagan quickly dropped off.

By the 11th week of the lockdown, the week of April 19, visitations were down by 82.4 per cent for the region, slightly worse than the provincial average of 80.7 per cent, according to a report by the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association.

Since then, the numbers have slowly improved until, during the week of May 10, they were only down by 48.6 per cent. For the last week in May, the latest week available, overnight visits had dropped slightly to 50 per cent of what they were in 2019.

The association uses Environics Analytics to collect data from mobile phone movements in the region. It’s aggregated and is kept anonymous. It’s compared on a weekly basis to the previous year.

See the report here.

READ MORE: Big Brother may not be watching you in Thompson-Okanagan but big data is

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