Canada is again an approved destination for Chinese group travel, but Nunavut’s travel industry isn’t rushing to launch a Mandarin-language marketing campaign any time soon.
“We are not allocating funding specifically toward the Chinese market at this time,” said David Boyle, director of tourism and culture industries with the Department of Community Services, in an email.
China created the Approved Destination Status in 1995 as an arrangement with specific countries to facilitate Chinese group tour visits to those nations.
Chinese travel agents approved by the Chinese government are permitted to promote approved countries as destinations, and to work with tour operators in those countries.
Canada was first placed on the list in 2010.
The two countries celebrated the Canada-China Year of Tourism in 2018, which N.W.T. capitalized on by attracting visitors to view the northern lights. The territory saw about 19,000 Chinese tourists in the 2017-18 fiscal year, according to data from its Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. That’s up from roughly 6,000 Chinese tourists in 2016-17.
China suspended group tours in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, then bumped Canada off the list when it reappeared in 2023 due to what the Chinese government referred to as safety concerns.
It was among five countries that didn’t make the list, along with Sudan, Syria, North Korea and Ukraine.
The group travel ban mostly affected British Columbia and Ontario, which typically received 75 per cent of total Canadian expenditures from Chinese travellers in the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
China represents the second-most valuable tourism market worldwide, worth $1.3 trillion, according to figures from the federal department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.
In 2019, China represented Canada’s third-largest source of international tourism with 700,000 Chinese tourists spending of about $1.9 billion that year.
Boyle said Nunavut maintains a working relationship with Destination Canada’s China team to keep abreast of trends and opportunities.
Destination Nunavut, established in 2017 as the travel marketing arm of the Government of Nunavut, promotes Nunavut to travellers from its core markets of the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany, as well as domestic travel.
The United States’ travel market is the most valuable in the world, at $3.2 trillion, and Germany is third with a value of $488 billion, according to federal figures.
“Canada maintains high standards for travel safety and quality, and remains a welcoming, secure destination for Chinese visitors,” said Anita Anand, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, in a Nov. 3 statement celebrating China’s readmission of Canada to the list the previous month.