What is Tourism Whistler’s forecast for the 2008/09 winter season?
Whistler has faced numerous challenges this past year, with the most predominate being the global financial crisis that hit in the fall and impacted all of our world-wide markets. The economic downturn means that tourism overall is off in every tourism destination in the world, with customers choosing to travel closer to home, to travel less, to spend less, or to not travel at all. Tourism Whistler’s 120-day pace report (which shows preliminary bookings for the upcoming four months compared to the same period a year ago) is indicating decreases in the 20% range, compared to last year. Tourism Whistler knows that our overseas and long-haul U.S. markets are pacing behind last year. However, it also knows that with the arrival of the big snow there is still pent-up demand for skiing out of our regional markets and it wants to maximize this opportunity.
