Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 01/01) - More tourists are visiting Yellowknife than ever before, according to the manager of the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre, Beth Harding.

Northern Frontier Visitors Centre's general manager Beth Harding says more tourists are visiting Yellowknife every year. - Thorunn Howatt/NNSL photo

"The numbers have been steady into the centre," she said adding, "quite a few people have been coming in from Ontario and Alberta. And of course lots of Americans."

She attributed the unusually high numbers from Ontario to an advertisement in a Canadian Tourism Commission booklet called Go.

After picking a random day and counting 100 visitors to the centre she said the number of visits have been steadily on the rise.

As of June 30 they were up by 400 visits over the same period in 2000. Last year there were 17,300 visitors to the centre, up from 1997 when there were 12,000.

"What I keep hearing is that Yellowknife is very friendly. I think people come back and they tell their friends about it," Harding said.

The Northern Frontier Visitors Association is made up of 100 tourism-related businesses.

Galleries and gift shops have seen a rise from tourist sales.

"As a general rule we don't usually depend on summer visitors. So this year is a bonus," said the co-owner of the Birchwood Gallery, Dana Britton.

"This has been our busiest summer."

Hotels are seeing a mini-boom that usually occurs only during the Northern lights season. And according to reservations at some hotels August should out-do July. The Yellowknife Hotel reported next month's bookings to be up.

"I would say what's coming is going to be way more than any other year," said Jenni Bruce, the front desk manager at the Yellowknife Inn.

But not all tourism-related businesses are happy with the state the industry is in. Raven Tours' Bill Tait said his company has seen a decline for at least 10 years and is experiencing one of the worst tourism years on record.

"We've seen a drastic drop," he said, adding that he thinks the city's marketing strategy is the problem.

"We don't have enough product here to draw people," he said.

Although he believes the U.S. economy is mostly to blame, "We're not going to solve the summer tourism problem here without facing it."