BC Ferries plans to increase its sailings out of both Horseshoe Bay and Tsawwassen this summer as cuts to other, smaller routes continue to hit tourism operators in northern B.C.
The ferry corporation’s summer schedule kicks in on June 25 when daily sailings on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route double to 32 from 16 currently, BC Ferries spokeswoman Deborah Marshall told Business in Vancouver June 18.
The Horseshoe Bay route will also get more sailings: 22 per day starting June 25, up from 16 currently. The Tsawwassen-Duke Point run is the other run that will get more sailings. Currently, it has reduced service on weekends. That will end on June 25, when it will have 16 sailings each day.
“This is a typical summer schedule that we normally have for the major routes,” Marshall said.
Increases in service between Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, however, is cold comfort to northern B.C. tourism operators grappling with slashed bookings due to BC Ferries cuts.
“Our business is about 10% of what it was last year,” Bella Coola Grizzly Tours owner Leonard Ellis told BIV. “We’re getting almost no visitors.”
Clearwater Lake Lodge and Resort owner Bernward Kalbhenn told BIV that his bookings have taken an even bigger hit, being down by more than 91% to 36 from an average of 416 bookings in each of the past several years.
B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone reduced service on 16 BC Ferries routes in late April as a way to save $18.9-million in costs.
He launched public consultation after announcing the cuts in November but lobbying from northern B.C. tourism operators failed to change his mind.
His ministry sent BIV a statement saying that the decision was “tough” but that the cuts were “necessary.”
The most contentious of Stone’s cuts was to cancel the 115-vehicle capacity Queen of Chilliwack’s direct sailing between Port Hardy and Bella Coola. He replaced it with the 16-vehicle capacity MV Nimpkish, which is the smallest ferry in BC Ferries’ fleet, in a longer route between Bella Coola and Bella Bella.
Ellis said the water is choppy enough in parts of that journey on the MV Nimpkish to make the trip “scary” for some people.
He sold about 250 wilderness and marine tours at $150 apiece last year and his two cabins were occupied about 75% of the time at the rate of $150 per night. So, instead of $64,500 in revenue, he expects little more than $6,000 this year.
Kalbhenn ridiculed the MV Nimpkish as being a barge that was intended to be a river ferry travelling about 500 metres, not for 12-hour voyages.
“Europeans don’t like to travel the same route twice,” said Kalbhenn, who is originally from Germany and caters mostly to European clients who book packages that include visits in Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
He averages about $1,150 per booking, which includes a stay at his 12-room lodge and extras such as helicopter tours. So, the ferry cuts will cost his business hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.
He has been encouraging Pacific Coastal Airlines to boost its thrice-weekly flights between Vancouver and Anihim Lake.
NDP Leader John Horgan told BIV that he believes Stone only took into consideration the cost to operate the ferries and not the cost to the B.C. economy of reduced tourism.
“A prudent business person would do an impact assessment of what the consequences are of those cuts – not just to the provision of the service but the spinoffs,” Horgan said. “The consequences are dire.”
