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U.S. visits to this area showing a steady decline

As the number of U.S. visitors continues to decline, the manager of Thunder Bay’s tourism association says she hopes traffic from Winnipeg and Toronto can fill the gap.
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Levina Collins, manager of North of Superior Tourism Association, inside the May Street building on July 11, 2011. (Jeff Labine, tbnewswatch.com)
As the number of U.S. visitors continues to decline, the manager of Thunder Bay’s tourism association says she hopes traffic from Winnipeg and Toronto can fill the gap.

Traffic data from the Canadian Border Services Agency shows a continued drop in non-residential traffic crossing the Pigeon River border into Thunder Bay for the past four years. In 2007, the number of non-resident traffic coming to Thunder Bay was more than 48,000. But that dropped to nearly 42,000 in 2008, then nearly 38,000 in 2009 and more than 35,000 in 2010.

Levina Collins, manager of the North of Superior Tourism Association, said that overall American tourism has dropped by about 35 per cent.

The lack of tourism from the United States was a big blow to the city’s economy, but she said they have a plan to try and attract residents from Winnipeg and Toronto to fill that void.

“We mostly go into the United States to promote and we still are but we’re trying to encourage people to advertise in those two cities,” Collins said. “That’s what I’m looking to do is to fill the gap left by the Americans. I think there’s lots of potential there. When people come here, they don’t want to leave it’s so beautiful. My son lived in Windsor for eight years and he said ‘mom I have to return to paradise.’”

Instead of driving from Winnipeg and Toronto to Thunder Bay, Collins suggested tourists should fly and rent a car so they could see the region.

Collins said a number of factors have led to the decline such as the global recession, the price of the Canadian dollar and the cost of gas.

All these reasons have caused Americans to stay home and not come to Canada, she said.

The tourism association planned to start an ambassador program within the next two weeks.

She said they hoped that if they treat those ambassadors well enough that they will spread the word about Thunder Bay to their community.

Collins joked that if they gave every American visitor gas money then that might be enough of an incentive for them to come to Canada.

“If Canada can figure out a way to reduce the gas prices then I think we will see more Americans coming to Canada,” she said.





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