The number of visitors to Quesnel was up in 2018.

Laura Long, Coordinator at the Quesnel Visitor Centre, went over some of the numbers at last night’s North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee meeting…

“We saw general increases year over year for general visitors, as well as parties, by 5.79 percent in overall parties as well as 15.55 percent in overall visitors. So by parties, those are groups of people that are travelling together, and by visitors, those are individual visitors that are visiting within those parties.”

There were 10,107 visitors last year, up from 8,747.

That is down from the visitor numbers from 2013 to 2016, 13,545 in 2015, 13,183 in 2014 and 15, 984 in 2013.

Those numbers however, are pre-wildfires.

The cancellation of Billy Barker Days last year also had a big impact on the overall numbers.

In terms of visitors from within Canada, Long says there were a few bright spots…

“We saw a very high lift in European visitors by 38.24 percent and U.S and Washington visitors by 55.56 percent and California visitors by 40 percent, which was a positive move in the right direction with the exception of Asia and Australia which were down 8.96 percent.”

Within Canada, Long says there was a 14.41 percent increase in BC residents compared to 2017.

However, local residents (-6.27%) and Alberta visitors (-41.44%) were down from last year.