Despite a push for Canadians to explore the vastness of their country this summer, tourism in Fort St John was slower than anticipated.
“I’ve heard from a few of the food establishments along the way that it’s been quite quiet. They’re struggling to get people through the doors,” said Tiffany Hetenyi, the executive director at the Fort St John and District Chamber of Commerce.
She said people generally come to the city for work, or as a stop on their way to Canada’s northernmost territories.
“Part of Fort St John’s tourism is a lot of people aren’t travelling here just to come here to visit – most are travelling for work,” Hetenyi explained.
One missing piece of the puzzle for Fort St John’s tourism scene, Hetenyi said, is the lack of direction. Previously, the city, alongside its chamber of commerce, operated a tourism committee, but it was merged with the visitor information centre a couple of years ago.
“We used to have a tourism committee, but it collapsed,” she began, “the city of Fort St John will probably try to develop their (tourism plan) in the next year.”
Currently, out-of-town visitors are handled by two municipal departments, recreation and economic development.
“It’s a little bit different than when there was the Fort St John tourism group – it’s more of a collaborative effort right now,” Heidi Avanthay, the city of Fort St John’s program and services manager, explained. Fort St John does not keep records of how many tourists seek out the visitor’s centre – hence, Avanthay said it is hard to state if the steady flow of people into the centre was a sign of an active local community or an influx of tourists.
Moving forward, they said it is unlikely the city will majorly shift its priorities to focus on attracting tourists, as Hetenyi said it started trended downwards after the pandemic. She and Avanthay agreed people who make the trip up to see the city enjoy the hospitality and leave glad they stopped by.
Fort St John city council has almost exclusively considered tourism on their agendas this summer when in conjunction with city happenings, such as August’s International Airshow – though there is no available data as to how successful this event was at fostering out-of-town attention.
The city’s current draft of its official community plan says they plan on prioritizing the city’s signs along the Alaska Highway to attract passersby and will develop a public art policy to beautify the city for visitors.
