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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Summertime visitors to Yellowknife have begun streaming into the city this season - off flights, in RVs, and into downtown shops, restaurants, and galleries, officials at the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre said.

Ken German and his wife Elaine from Las Vegas, Nevada, drop in at the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre during their summer visit on Monday. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

Elaine German and her husband Ken arrived at the visitors centre this week from Las Vegas, Nevada, on a three-day trip to see Great Slave Lake.

"It's been great," German said, remarking about the city's sunny days after flying North to get away from Nevada's hot weather.

The clear, warm weather may have encouraged some visitors to extend trips longer since the start of the territory's fishing and touring season on the last weekend of May, said Tracy Therrien, general manager of the visitors centre.

"They want to fish, shop, visit the legislature building, the museum, Old Town, Bush Pilots' Monument, walk the trails, do Cameron Falls," Therrien said. "They stay at the B and Bs."

The downtown 49 Street visitors centre has a Tour Specials board, where last-minute specials are posted by tour operators such as Bluefish Services for day tours.

The number of tourist visitors to the centre has picked up and hit peak for the summer season, Therrien said.

"This is very normal," she said as a number of visitors walked inside the visitors centre Monday morning. "Every day, we're busy."

She estimates the centre gets an average of 100 visitors per day.

"If this is any indication, we're off to a pretty booming start (of the summer tourism season)," she said.

About 80 per cent of the visitors in the summertime are domestic and road travellers from across Canada and the United States.

In addition to British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and the U.S., summer visitors also come from parts of Europe Therrien said, sometimes on their way to visit Alaska or across the NWT.

Last season, the Department of Industry, Tourism, and Investment estimates more than 20,000 visitors came to the NWT for outdoor adventure, fishing, and general touring and spent almost $30 million all together during the visits.

Fishing brought in the most number of visitors out of all the travel purposes, with 11.8 million tourists in 2010/11 visiting to try their luck at angling.

The department has not yet released the numbers for the 2011/12 tourism season, which included a royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and his wife Catherine, to Yellowknife last summer.

"We had good numbers last year," said Colin Dempsey, president of the visitors association. "We would hope to at least maintain that this year and I would say it's been about steady."

More employees are hired at the visitors centre for the busy summertime season, which usually has eight full-time employees during the summer and four full-time employees over the winter months.

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