Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 10/02) - National studies show international travel to Canada is increasing, fuelled by a greater number of Americans travelling by car.

But hotel employees say Yellowknife's tourism industry is still in a slump.

"All the reports and trends say it is slowly increasing," said the Yellowknife Inn's front desk manager Jenni Legge.

"I haven't really seen it yet."

Legge said she thinks the North's isolation and poor road conditions mean Yellowknife isn't benefitting from the shift to travelling by car.

She said the hotel is barely turning a profit and occupancy is still down by about 40 to 50 per cent.

The inn's saving grace is corporate travel and travel generated by the mines.

"That keeps you going," she said.

Over at the Explorer Hotel, rooms division manager Tyrone Baleros said summer is generally slow for hotels. But he said business is still down between 25 to 30 per cent compared to last year at this time.

He said the industry's bread and butter, the Japanese market, took the greatest hit after Sept. 11. Business dropped by almost half immediately following the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington.

However, Baleros said reservations for the fall look promising.

"We expect by next year, everything should be back to normal," he said.

The Northern Frontier Visitor's Centre tracks the number of people who walk into the centre each month.

From January to June of this year, there were 6,422 walk-ins at the centre compared to 8,199 during the same months last year.

The Asian market dropped by 51 per cent; the American market by 23 per cent; and the Canadian market fell by 13 per cent.

In June, the centre saw 2,417 walk-ins compared to 2,784 the previous June.

But lodges report stable business. Wallace Finlayson owns Trophy Lodge, located at the east end of Great Slave Lake. He said business is about the same as last year.

"I'm getting just as many American tourists as I expected," he said. Greg Robertson, owner of Blue Fish Services, takes tourists on fishing trips in the Yellowknife-area.

"We're about as busy as you want to be," he said. He added most of his customers drive to Yellowknife from the United States and Canada.

Gerry LePrieur, the government's Director of Parks and Tourism, said he isn't surprised lodges are faring better than hotels.

"That sort of business doesn't drop too much because it's a niche of clientele that are fairly steady," he said.

"They tend to plan a long time for those trips. The chances of them cancelling out are usually fairly slim."