With the second half of summer underway, tourism operators in the Okanagan are hoping business will pick up after a slow start to the season. Some businesses are blaming provincial legislation that bans short-term rentals, resulting in fewer places for visitors to stay. The lack of tourists is also impacting the region’s restaurant industry, which heavily depends on summer traffic.
“If we go back one year when we had the forest fires last August, it’s never really recovered,” said Ian Tostenson, the president and CEO of the B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association.
“A number of things are going on. I think the overriding issue is the economy. People with their incomes, you’re seeing travel, even in places like Whistler and Vancouver Island, is down.
” “How are restaurants doing? We’re not doing well up here. This is the time when we literally want to be making hay, and we’re not seeing that. “A lot of locals are out, doing things, but not tourists.
” Proof of that can be seen on local highways, where vehicles with Alberta licence plates aren’t as numerous as they should be during a normal summer. “Normally, we’d have floods of Albertans coming through. Now we’re down to maybe one a day.
Also coming in from Vancouver, we’ve seen some big declines as well with travel,” said Jane Sawin, who owns Priest Creek Family Estate Winery. Sawin said the winery is seeing about half the traffic it saw last summer. “We’re seeing a big decline,” S.