It takes a lot of time and effort to get to N.L. Our tourism strategy should embrace the hardship
This satirical column is by Edward Riche, a St. John's writer.
MEMO
From: Penny Petipas-Nolan, chair, Tourism subcommittee,
Newfoundland and Labrador 2041 Working Group
To: Minister of Tourism, Culture, Arts and Recreation
Re: Here from There
On news that WestJet is significantly curtailing their service to Newfoundland and Labrador and in light of continuing disruption in Marine Atlantic service to the mainland it is well time to reconsider our larger tourism strategy.
That there will be fewer ways to and from the province and that those routes remaining will be more costly (given their history of predatory commercial practices we can anticipate Air Canada steeply increasing ticket prices in the near term) is inescapable. That we must discreetly withdraw the generally open invitation to visitors, and replace it with a more narrow call to a niche adventure tourist market, is clear.
We have to capitalize on the fact that it is extremely difficult and costly to come here from almost anywhere, making a virtue of our increasing isolation from the main. We have to begin targeting the sort of travellers more interested in Antarctica or North Korea than, say, Nova Scotia.
There are silver linings in this change in circumstance. No European tourist who has flown 3,000 kilometres west of St. John's, via one of the most unreliable airports in the world, Pearson, only to fly 3,000 kilometres back the way they came, is going to arrive with high expectations of levels of service. If you've had to fly that far past your destination to double back, you are hardly going to expect rental vehicles and taxis at the airport or anywhere fit to eat.
Fewer tourists will mean fewer Airbnbs, freeing up some places to fill gaps in the tight St. John's rental market.
Expanding the Torbay airport terminal building before seeking out new users does, in hindsight, resemble a cargo cult. But there is nothing to stop the space being repurposed as retail or storage.
Exploring whether carriers other than those from Montreal or Calgary might be attracted to use YYT would take some initiative from those responsible so is unlikely to occur.
Remember: It's good for business, not a disaster!
How we can spin this as "good for business" rather than "a catastrophe" has been, for the past weeks, the preoccupation of the best minds (OK, "mind") in the department and she is still drawing a blank.
The argument could be made, and this will appeal to some young townie utopians, that the consequent decline in business taken with the decrease in fuel consumed getting here and leaving can only be good for the environment. Our carbon footprint will be as kitten tracks in the freshly fallen snow. This change in approach to enterprise will rankle anyone with even a glimmer of ambition but they remain a tiny minority.
The people who can remember flying directly to Heathrow or Newark in comfort are aging and will soon be dead. That kind of convenient travel will become a mythology in much the same way that Reykjavik and Frankfurt are now imaginary places to most folks at the airport authority.
Let's again put aside arguments over how this happened and who is to blame; this is a small community and we all know many of those responsible. They are good people who sometimes fail to pay attention and frequently make mistakes. Let's acknowledge that most Canadians are preoccupied by deficient public transit in growing urban areas and couldn't care less whether Newfoundland is returning, aggressively, to its status as a forbidding and difficult-to-access rock in the North Atlantic.
We are going to have to address this problem ourselves, with many of the same people who have, serially, bungled things in the past. More and more we are all going to have to get along, because there ain't any getting out.
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