TORONTO- Officials predict a large increase in the number of U.S tourists to Canada this summer because of terrorist’s attacks on Americans aboard, fear of Libyan reprisals and weakened Canadian currency.

Tourism industry officials said there already has been a marked increase in U.S visitors to Canada 18.4 percent in January and 14.5 percent in February since terrorists killed 20 people at airports in Rome and Vienna last December.

“We don’t like the fact that there’s this misery in the world,” said John Lawson executive director of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, “It really is a dilemma, though we’re glad to have the business.”

Lawson, whose organization represents about 100,000 tourism related businesses, predicted at least 15 percent increase in tourists this summer. That figure may be conservative.

Lawson cited increasing attacks on Americans around the world, fear among US, and travelers of Libyan retaliation for last week’s bombing raids on Tripoli and Benghazi and a Canadian dollar worth about 72.cents. Conversely, one U: dollar is worth about $1.39 Canadian dollars.

Officials also cited stepped-up advertising in the United States by the Canadian government and the attraction of Expo 86, a world transportation and communication fair that opens in Vancouver, ‘on May 2 and runs upto Oct 12,

“To be quite honest, I think the fear of terrorism and the weakening of the Canadian dollar,” said John Ward, manager of travel services for the Canadian Automobile Association. “There is a significant trend. Americans are in fact staying in North America.”

Ward said his organization’s U.S affiliate, the American Automobile Association, reported a 50 coincident with a large increase to U.S and Canadian points.

Joan Paley, of the Metro Toronto Convention and Visitors Association, agreed. She said one meeting planner she met in New York in January canceled a scheduled 1987 convention in Rome and moved it to Toronto because she feared for the safety of more than 400 data processing industry representatives who would attend.

“Toronto is clean and safe and they don’t have to worry about their people getting hurt,” Paley said, “They’re not going to get mugged or shot at.”

 

Article extracted from this publication >> April 25, 1986