The number of international visitors to British Columbia went over the million mark for the first few months of 2016 according to the latest statistics.
Executive Director for the Williams Lake District and Chamber of Commerce, Claudia Blair says it’s definitely proving to be busy at the Williams Lake Visitor Centre.
“They’re coming from all over. Yesterday morning, I had a long conversation with a couple from New York, which that’s a long ways away to come to little Williams Lake but man are they ever having a good time and the weather doesn’t seem to be a factor.”
From January to April, close to 1.2 million visitors came to the province resulting in an 18.2% increase over the same period last year.
April also experienced exceptional growth as 328,006 visitors traveled to British Columbia. This is a 21% increase over April of 2015 (271,136 visitors same month last year) and is the highest number of visitors to B.C. on record for all the months of April over the last 10 years.
The low Canadian dollar along with Destination BC’s new marketing strategy, and increased air access/additional flights to Vancouver from China, South Korea, and Mexico are some of the factors for the exceptional growth.