Sunny outlook for 2024 tourism season on South Shore

Stephanie Miller Vincent is the co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative. The organization held its annual general meeting Tuesday at the Quarterdeck Resort in Summerville Centre. (Rick Conrad)

Tourism operators on Nova Scotia’s South Shore are looking forward to a good season, optimistic that visitors will return to the area after a disappointing 2023.

Stephanie Miller Vincent is the co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative, which counts almost 120 members from Peggys Cove to Barrington. 

“We’re a resilient group. We’re also a really optimistic group. And weather will play a factor, the economy will play factor, but we know we’ve got first-class product, we’ve got things to offer that nobody else has in other regions of Nova Scotia or Canada, so we’re looking forward to a really great year.”

The co-operative held its annual general meeting on Tuesday at the Quarterdeck Resort on picturesque Summerville Beach. About 40 members from hotels, restaurants, municipalities and chambers of commerce around the South Shore got an update on the group’s efforts to boost tourism and to extend the season beyond the summer and early fall.

Wildfires, floods and rain contributed to a challenging 2023 tourist season for the area’s businesses. The South Shore, the Yarmouth and Acadian Shores and Cape Breton saw declines in room nights sold compared with 2022, while accommodation numbers in the rest of the province were higher than the year before.

Hotel stays, or room nights sold, on the South Shore for the May to October 2023 period were down about five per cent over 2022.

Those at the meeting on Tuesday said early indications are that this year’s bookings are up over last year.

Jill Forrest, the general manager of the Quarterdeck, said early bookings look good.

“It’s promising for this upcoming year for sure. We are in a last-minute trend, it seems. Even last year, people tend to wait and see what the weather’s going to do and pull that final trigger on booking and knowing where they’re headed. But things are looking very good for the year.”

Susan Corkum-Greek, MLA for Lunenburg and Nova Scotia’s minister of economic development, told the co-operative’s members that she checked with the province’s tourism officials before the meeting to get an idea of what the season might bring. 

“And we have early indicators of early bookings. We know for instance that the Yarmouth ferry has a higher percentage of advance bookings, The hotel association is saying that. Room nights are not the only indicator but it shows buy-in intention and says something of length of stay.”

The co-operative’s annual lobster crawl in February always attracts a lot of attention. This year, the group says its marketing efforts resulted in more than 100 media headlines, reaching about 270 million people, with an advertising value of just under $7 million.

About 100 of the co-operative’s members held 128 events around the South Shore connected with the lobster crawl. And just under 80 per cent of those who attended a lobster crawl event were from Nova Scotia, according to a survey conducted by the co-operative.

Miller Vincent says it’s always difficult to predict what the season will be like. But she expects staycations to be big again this year.

“You’re always trying to look at the data,” she says. “We always look at the price of gas, but we’ve got more flights coming into Halifax so that’s important. The economy will probably keep people closer to home and looking to see not only what’s in their own neighborhood but what’s next door. Staycations have become more important than before Covid because we recognize what we’ve got here.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Listen to the audio version of this story below

Queens County businesses hurting from lower tourism numbers in 2023

Melanie Perron, co-owner of Hell Bay Brewing in Liverpool, says she hopes summer 2024 is better than the 2023 season. (Rick Conrad photo)

By Rick Conrad

Fires, floods and downpours combined last year to keep visitors away from the South Shore, according to numbers released recently by Tourism Nova Scotia.

Hotel stays, or room nights sold, for the May to October 2023 period were down about five per cent over 2022. That compares to an overall decrease of two per cent in all of Nova Scotia. The only regions that saw more people in 2023 were the Eastern Shore and the Annapolis Valley.

The South Shore was one of the hardest hit areas of the province. Yarmouth and Acadian Shores saw the biggest drop at six per cent over 2022.

Stephanie Miller Vincent, co-ordinator of the South Shore Tourism Co-operative, says the wildfires in Barrington and Shelburne, and torrential rains and floods later in the summer conspired to keep people away from the South Shore.

“We had an odd beginning to our peak season in 2023,” she said in an interview. “We had fires in the Barrington area that shut down (Highway) 103 so folks weren’t travelling this coast. So that affected numbers.

“2023 numbers are tough to look at because we’re looking at numbers that are coming the year following a couple of years of pent-up travel demand.”

The numbers aren’t really surprising to businesses and organizations in Queens County that rely on summer tourist traffic to help float them through the rest of the year.

Melanie Perron, the co-owner of Hell Bay Brewing Company in Liverpool, says she saw a lot fewer visitors from the Maritimes last year.

“We rely so much on our patio season to bring in tourism and people from the city and other places,” Perron says.

“And it seemed like it rained every weekend so those would have been when we would have had a surplus of people coming and enjoying our beaches and our parks and then coming and stopping and having a flight (of beer) or getting beer to go. So I found our numbers were way down because of the weather.”

At the Queens County Museum, which relies partly on donations from tourists, visitor numbers dropped by more than 3,000 across its four properties over 2022. Besides the main museum, Perkins House, Fort Point Lighthouse and the Queens Museum of Justice are also part of the museum complex.

Dayle Crouse, the museum’s administrative assistant, said that despite a spike in visitors in 2022 when people were doing more post-Covid travelling, the numbers still haven’t recovered to 2019 levels.

“We found that after Covid and everybody had a little bit of freedom they really spiked and everybody was spending their dollars and going out. But then I think the next year, people really started to rein in their dollars and numbers have dropped.”

Crouse says a combination of rising gas prices, bad weather and news coverage of the wildfires contributed to the decrease.

Miller Vincent says that while tourists from outside the Maritimes tend to book their vacations six months to a year in advance, those closer to home are more spontaneous.

“As Atlantic Canadians and Maritimers we look on Wednesday and say, ‘OK, what’s the weather this weekend? Should I go or should I stay?’ And if it’s calling for rain, you’ll see those accommodation numbers not pick up where they need to be.”

Perron says she hopes 2024 brings brighter weather and more people back to the area’s beaches and the brewery’s patio.

“We usually bank on the summer to get through the winter. So our summer was so dismal that we’re just scraping by to get through the winter and hopefully we’ll have a nice sunny hot summer to bring out all the beer drinkers.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com

Lucy the Lobster sees shadow, predicts six more weeks of winter

Lucy the Lobster saw her shadow in Barrington on Friday morning. (Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl photo)

By Rick Conrad

Lucy the Lobster didn’t crack a sweat when she saw her shelly shadow on the wharf in Barrington on Friday morning.

That means six more weeks of winter, at least for the South Shore of Nova Scotia.

Lucy made her prediction as the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl Festival kicked into high gear. It’s a whole month of shellabrations along the South Shore involving the scrumptious crustacean.

Nova Scotia’s official winter prognosticator had a different prediction. Shubenacadie Sam did not see his shadow, which means spring is around the corner.

Stephanie Miller Vincent, co-ordinator of the lobster crawl, said it was prime shadow-seeing conditions in Barrington. 

“We had sunshine, I’m sorry that they didn’t in Shubenacadie. We were there. We believe what Lucy saw.”

Now, Lucy gets to hang out in a tank at Capt. Kat’s Lobster Shack in Barrington Passage for the rest of the lobster crawl.

“Lucy is spending some time at the spa. You can pop in and take a shellfie with her while she relaxes for the rest of the month of February.”

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com