By Patrick Blennerhassett. Image: Janet Wait, the owner of Jan’s on the Beach, said her White Rock restaurant’s U.S. clientele has increased recently | Submitted
With the low Canadian dollar, South Surrey and White Rock’s restaurant sector is reaping the benefits of being close to the 49th parallel.
The latest international tourism numbers from the provincial government showed an 11.1% increase for November 2015 compared with the same month in 2014. And with the Canadian dollar reaching its lowest level since the summer of 2003, the White Rock Business Improvement Association (BIA) is trying some new marketing tactics.
“We’re doing our Taste White Rock event right now,” said executive director Douglas Smith, referring to the BIA’s annual restaurant festival, “and we’ve been advertising on KISM, which is a radio station based out of Bellingham.”
Provincial government statistics show a 12.5% increase in U.S. tourists in November 2015 compared with the same month the year before.
Janet Wait, owner and operator of Jan’s on the Beach, a restaurant in White Rock, said her business has been a big beneficiary of increased visits from the U.S. Staff have been keeping informal track of the numbers and have found that up to a third of customers are from south of the border.
“I’ve got all my servers asking things like, ‘Hey where are you from? Have you been here before?’” Wait said.
Both Wait and Smith said most of the U.S. residents they’re seeing are from the Bellingham area, but lately they’ve noticed a more from places like Seattle and farther south in Washington state.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, the number of Americans travelling to Canada rose by 7.8% in 2015. In total, 11,008,848 U.S. residents travelled to Canada recreationally in 2015, a jump from 10,209,826 in 2014. Eighteen per cent of U.S. residents travelling as tourists abroad are going to Canada.
Mike Gardner, owner of Sammy J’s Grill & Bar, which has a restaurant in the South Surrey area, said he’s noticed other businesses taking an international marketing approach.
“I know a few places in [The Shops at] Morgan Crossing that are advertising in the States a lot,” he said. “Our business itself has exploded in the last year, and I assume that has something to do with all the people from Bellingham. We just had our best January since we opened; our business has literally gone up 15% to 20%.”
Gardner added that the low dollar has brought not only more U.S. tourists, but also a lot more Canadians, who are staying local to spend their recreational dollars.
“People are doing staycations too, talking to a lot of our customers who regularly go down south. Even my wife and I, we go to Vegas a lot and we haven’t done that in the last six months. When the dollar was $0.80 it was tolerable because you could get a bit of a discount, but where it’s at now, it’s pretty tough.”
At press time, the Canadian dollar was trading at US$0.72.
Cliff Annable, executive director of the South Surrey & White Rock Chamber of Commerce, echoed Gardner’s comment.
“The positive as well is that people are staying home instead of shopping down south at places like the Bellis Fair Mall [in Bellingham]. That’s a real positive for the Canadian businesses … [that] our dollars are staying here too.”
