Yellowknife
The Explorer Hotel is preparing to add 75 rooms but it's not necessarily because tourism is booming in the city.

The Explorer Hotel will be adding 75 rooms, although no firm date has been set for the start of construction. Hotels across the city are busy this time of year with tourists from China and Korea here to see the northern lights. - NNSL file photo

Doug Cox, CEO of Touchstone Holdings, which owns the hotel, said The Explorer is doing "OK" and that there's some uncertainty but the expansion will possibly be done this year.

"We have the room on our site and we have all the infrastructure in place," said Cox. "If we didn't, it wouldn't make sense. The economy is not that strong, the market is tiny and it grows very slowly."

He said he is considering adding some meeting and conference rooms as well.

Cox said the new rooms will be modern with a slightly different design to the old ones, but that the company hasn't yet got into the level of detail to say exactly how they will differ.

Colin Dempsey, president of the Northern Frontier Visitors Association, said more conference capable facilities is what the city needs more than rooms.

He organizes a conference in Yellowknife and said The Explorer is his only option in the city and winter is usually a busy time for the hotel.

"We've now moved the conference to later in the season so we can avoid the aurora tourists," said Dempsey. "Last (conference), the hotel was booked and our people couldn't get rooms because of all the tourists there. That's great but it would be nice if there was another hotel that was more specialized in conferences that wasn't getting all those tourist bookings, and then there would be some competition in the market. If we were expanding hotels, my first priority would be to see another conference centre capable of hosting 250 people."

He said it's difficult for hotels to manage the city's seasonal tourism schedule.

"It's normal for this time of year (for hotels to be) full," said Dempsey. "The problem is you've got a hotel that's probably only about half full for eight or nine months of the year, and then you've got two to four months where you're totally booked and everything in town is booked. So do you build a whole bunch more rooms when you know they're going to sit empty for half the year, or do you expand?"

It's a tough balance, Dempsey said, for hotels to balance expanding infrastructure to meet the needs of the busy tourism season while also considering the additional overhead that expansion brings in slow seasons.

He said The Explorer is usually the first hotel to book up, so adding rooms should be good for it.

Chinese and Koreans flock to Yellowknife for winter aurora

Numbers are up in recent years at the Yellowknife Visitors Centre, but almost all of that is from the Asian market.

"Over the last few years we've seen consistent growth," said Dempsey. "Really, it's hard to say growth because it's almost all coming from two markets: Korea and China. Everything else is the same or even down, but those are way up."

They come here because they're after the best, explained Dempsey, who has family ties to Taiwan.

"They want to do everything the best, the most impressive - whatever the premier or top of the list is in everything they do. When it comes to aurora, Yellowknife is the aurora capital of the world, the best place to see the aurora, and they don't want the second best. They want to come to the best place where they're going to have the highest probability of seeing some activity."

That keeps hotels full from December to February, the peak winter aurora season.

"Most people living in China and Korea probably never even see a star, or very rarely, because they're living in such dense urban centres and there's so much light pollution and whatever else," said Dempsey. "Even though there is aurora activity that takes place all over the world, it would be pretty rare for someone over there to see it."

Aurora visitors from Asia are usually doing multi-stop Canadian or North American tours, he said, speculating they spend about a week in Yellowknife on average.

June through July is the city's other big tourist season, but that's mostly for domestic travellers.

"Basically all the Asians come December, January, February and then all the Canadians and Americans will come in the summer for the midnight sun."

But that might be changing, Dempsey said.

"What we saw that was new this year, which might help some of those tourism numbers if we keep seeing it, is thanks to - well we won't thank climate change for anything - but August was not the same here as it typically has been and we actually had really good clear skies this August for aurora."

"That may be a new third high (tourism) season. If you're lucky, it's the perfect time to come, because the weather is pretty reasonable but you still get dark enough sky that you can catch some aurora."