Developing Winter and Shoulder Season Tourism

Iceland, a Nordic island nation, is a popular destination known for its stunning volcanoes, hot springs and lava fields, massive glaciers, and national parks. Before the government’s influential tourism program, the three-month summer season from June through August was considered the peak profit opportunity for local businesses.

Back in 2012, Iceland introduced its Tourist Site Protection Fund, to be partly financed via income from an accommodations tax. Its purpose was to propel the development of new attractions that would capture visitors while relieving some of the pressure from existing popular spots and better protecting its precious nature sites. Iceland’s marketing efforts also homed in on responsible traveller behaviour, safety, multi-seasonal offerings instead of just summer, and looked to drive visitation towards lesser-known areas of the island.

In recent years, tourism has grown. The program has created a balance between summer visitor volume and newer, off-season visitation. Back in 2010, a total of 488,000 international visitors arrived in Iceland. Skipping ahead to 2017, after the funding and marketing pivots, this number had grown to 2.2 million. As of 2018, the total population was 356,991, and a record breaking 2.3 million tourists visited Iceland.

South Africa is vast and diverse, with seasonal climates that greatly contrast across its regions. Cape Town and the Western Cape are known for hot and dry summer months, and wintertime rainfall from June until August. Meanwhile, the rest of the country including the highly popular Kruger National Park area has heavy storm showers in summer, followed by a dry winter season from May through October.

The country’s tourism marketing aimed to promote appealing, ‘anytime of year’ travel offerings by diversifying the destination messaging to follow the warm weather. While Cape Town is one of South Africa’s most popular tourist and city break spots, it may not hold the same appeal in winter. Meanwhile it is prime season for promoting safari trips to Kruger, Madikwe, Pilanesberg, and KwaZulu-Natal as animals venture out to find water and the land’s bush is lighter, making exotic game-spotting holidays optimal.

South Africa’s example of marketing multiple destinations, based on the timings of the varying regional warm seasons, makes a case for the benefits of diversification. Their approach has resulted in numerous ‘peak’ seasons for the country’s tourism industry, with these different seasons each catering to a unique traveller audience.

The Yukon is home to Canada’s highest peak, mountainous terrain, vibrantly coloured lakes and much more. It’s also made some of the country’s most significant commitments towards increasing winter and shoulder tourism.

The territory’s Tourism Development Strategy Action plan prioritized its need for year-round travellers, with the goal of “highlighting the unique assets that differentiate the destination from others” and maximizing available capacity during colder periods. From this came a series of supporting festivals, sports activities, special events, conferences and cultural attractions entirely focused around the winter and shoulder season months.

A 2017 summit that gathered over 100 attendees from 10 Yukon communities to discuss tourism trends and challenges highlighted accessibility as another key area needing a boost. In response to this feedback, several key improvements were enacted including a strategic airline partnership, local signage repair, and easier entry and infrastructure for backcountry trails, lakes, and rivers.

The Yukon’s program has created some positive results. From 2013 through 2019, their winter tourism saw strong development, including 22% growth in air arrivals (a 15,500 traveller increase at Erik Nielson Whitehorse International Airport), 21% more international overnight visitors, 13% higher retail sales, and a visitor increase of 6,800 at international border crossings into Yukon.

Tofino, located on the western coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, is a small village of 1,875 residents. It sits on traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation within the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region. It has long been a popular travel destination for surfing and other water sports during the warm summer months.

Between October and early March (formerly thought of as their ‘bad season’), the area is too cold for those visitors, and it sees highly turbulent weather passing through.

With an average of 10-15 powerful storms taking place each year, Tofino successfully stimulated their winter and shoulder season tourism by building a brand around these natural spectacles. The events are particularly thrilling for ‘storm-chasing’ tourists, as they move in from across the Pacific with no landmasses to disrupt their force until they reach the shore.

Today, Tofino village sees about 1 million visitors annually. The local hotel and accommodation businesses have greatly benefitted from this push, especially those with coastal views, as storm watching is mainly an indoor activity and thus creates an audience for them to engage with.

Churchill is a remote town on Hudson Bay, in the far north of Manitoba, which is only accessible by air or by rail. With potential visitors being so reliant on just two methods of travel, maintaining tourism can be challenging. For example, in 2017, a severe 57-hour blizzard caused so much damage to the railway that the community was isolated for 18 months.

Churchill’s main visitor draw is their wintry northern lights and local wildlife. In the summer, tourists arrive to water paddle and view the hundreds of resident belugas. Later in fall, their famous polar bear population appears. An estimated 10,000 people per year visit the brief 5-6 week long ‘bear season,’ which is sometimes referred to as an example of ‘last chance tourism.’

When the 2017 railway breakdown occurred, a group of local First Nations and industry leaders aligned together as the Arctic Gateway Group to purchase the damaged track along with the town’s port. Later in 2018, the railway path to Churchill was able to reopen, and a funding plan was also announced to support further renovations for the port.

Each year, 530,000 people travel to Northern Manitoba, generating over $115,000 million in revenue, according to Travel Manitoba. While the renovations no doubt have enabled tourism success, some local owners continue to worry the increased access to Churchill poses potential risks to the town’s very identity and its authenticity as a destination.