Travel Manitoba and Tourism Economics released the 2023 Visitor Spending and Visitation data from Statistics Canada in an industry webinar on October 2, along with an updated tourism forecast.

Statistics Canada released final data for visitor spending and visitation for the 2023 calendar year in August, which showed that spending by all visitors to Manitoba in 2023 reached an unprecedented $1.82 billion. This is significantly greater than the $1.6 billion in visitor spending in 2019, but only $17 million over the $1.8 billion figure reported in 2022.

While Manitobans travelling within the province make up the largest group of visitors, they typically spend less per person than visitors from other parts of Canada or international visitors. In 2023 Manitobans represented about 87 per cent of the visitors to Manitoba, but only 60 per cent of the spending. In contrast, visitors from other Canadian provinces represented 9.5 per cent of visitors, but 25 per cent of spending. Visitors from the U.S. and overseas combined were about 4 per cent of visitors, but represent around 15 per cent of spending.

For the first time since the pandemic, visitors from other Canadian provinces exceeded 2019 levels suggesting recovery is continuing. Overall, however, 2023 visitation levels are still below 2019 although significant improvements have been made.

Armed with the Statistics Canada data, Tourism Economics was able to update the Manitoba tourism forecast until 2031. Travel Manitoba aims to reach 12.8 million visitors spending $2.5 billion annually in the province by 2030. Daryl Cronk, Senior Economist at Tourism Economics, noted there are many factors impacting the industry’s growth.

As the Bank of Canada begins to drop the overnight lending rate and inflation remains within the 1-3 per cent goal, Tourism Economics is forecasting that after some contraction in Q3 2024, the macro-economy is becoming further stabilized in 2025 and the risk of recession has faded. Tourism Economics is forecasting further overnight rate cuts and expects the Bank of Canada will steadily lower the policy rate to 2.25 per cent by September 2025.

Issues of higher unemployment, weaker consumer spending, household debt as well as world events like the U.S. election and geopolitical uncertainty are all items that could affect the baseline outlook from Tourism Economics.

For the Manitoba tourism economy, this means that visits to Manitoba increased 19 per cent in 2023 and climbed to 10 million for the first time since the pandemic. Although visitation growth is expected to slow in 2024, Tourism Economics projects that total visitor volume will recover in 2024 and surpass 2019 levels.

To watch the webinar, click the link below. Note: The figures in the Visitation and Visitor Spending Chart in the video recording are incorrect. Refer to the 2023 Visitor Spending Exceeds 2019 Levels graph on the following slide for the correct 2023 figures.