Wes MacAleer, Minister of Economic Development and Tourism, today announced that Prince Edward Island experienced its fifth year in a row of increased visitation.
The number of pleasure visitors who came to Prince Edward Island between May and October, the period traditionally studied for tourism, increased by eight percent over 1995 to a total of 740,981 visitors. They spent $161.1 million, an increase of nine percent.
The increase in pleasure traffic was partially offset by a decrease in business traffic to the province. People visiting PEI purely for business reasons fell back to 1992 levels in both actual visitation and revenue expenditure. "We believe that the business results are a deviation and could be due to the small sample size of our business study," said Minister MacAleer. "In talking to our industry, we find that although there is a general feeling that business traffic is down, it is probably not down as much as we are reporting."
Increases came primarily from Ontario, New England, Japan and mid-to-long haul markets in North America. The Maritime market declined dramatically over 1995, largely attributed to inconsistent weather in the early part of the season. The growth caps off five years of steady increases in visitation and revenue for the Island tourism industry.
"Prince Edward Island was the only Maritime province to have an increase in traffic this year, clearly demonstrating that our industry's efforts in marketing and servicing our clients is working," said Minister MacAleer. "The Tourism Marketing Authority has done a tremendous job in ensuring that our industry continues to grow and with the opening of the Confederation Bridge, I am sure that this trend will only continue to expand."
The yearly tourism study is conducted by the research section of Enterprise PEI, who collects visitation numbers from both ferry services and at the airport. Approximately 2,900 visitors are given an in-depth interview to determine spending levels and demographic information and the study has a 95 percent confidence level with a two percent margin of error.
For more information contact: Ann Stanley, Public Relations, (902) 368-6322