Continuing trend in recent years of increasing visitors to Canada’s oldest and most popular national park
The federal agency said those numbers are, for the most part, continuing a trend in recent years of increasing visitors to Canada’s oldest and most popular national park.
“This year’s visitation follows the usual year-over-year increase we are accustomed to seeing,” spokeswoman Kelly Veillette said in an email.
She said visitation to the national park recovered from pre-pandemic levels two years ago.
And numbers for the busiest tourist season this year, June through August, were a similar story at 1,781,767 this year compared to 1,807,785 in 2023.
That came amid a backdrop of a wildfire in neighbouring Jasper National Park that destroyed 30 per cent of the Jasper townsite in late July, leading to the evacuation of 25,000 people and the virtual shutdown of the area’s tourist industry.
It threw the tourism rhythm in Banff National Park into some disarray, with visitors scrambling to divert trips away from Jasper and toward the mountains to the south, said David Matys, vice-president of destination development for Banff and Lake Louise Tourism.
“Certainly, our visitor service team was very busy with calls trying to make alternative arrangements,” he said.
“We certainly had uncertainty over the fires and how it was safe, and we tried to provide an accurate picture on how far away Jasper was from Banff.”
More visitors leading to more traffic woes
An initial rush of visitors into Banff from those already in the Rockies was followed by a slowdown due to cancellations and then a return to normal traffic, said Matys.
“We were quite fortunate not to have a ton of (wildfire) smoke for the rest of the season, and we had fairly similar (visitor traffic) to what we had last year, the summer specifically,” he said.
Over the past decade, visitation to the national park has jumped by 31 per cent to well over four million annually.
Canada’s next-busiest national park is Jasper, which in 2022-23 saw 2.4 million visitors.
Earlier this year, Parks Canada officials predicted another record-breaking visitation year, which could still be realized given a busy September, fuelled by warm temperatures.
A proposal to impose a parking reservation system to control visits into the townsite was dropped, partly due to the fact local lawmakers have no power to stop motorists from entering, said Mayor Corrie DiManno.
“We need to explore more mass transit (from Calgary) before we do that — we’ve been really successful in getting people to shift (in Banff town) to Roam Transit,” she said.
“Our overall visitation is going to continue to increase . . . it’s the same road network we’ve had since 1990.”
But vehicle crossings over the Bow River bridge toward a host of tourist venues dropped last August by 18 per cent compared to 2019, reflecting increased use of local transit, said DiManno.
“In reducing the number of vehicles over the bridge, we’re going to just continue to communicate to visitors when parking is full on the south side and to get parking as soon as you can,” she said, adding the creation of a transit express lane on Mountain Avenue south of the bridge should also help.
The Jasper wildfire, she said, might have had little overall effect on visitor numbers to her town, with those scared away by the disaster balanced by those driven from Jasper to Banff by the closure of the national park to the north.
Alberta eyes further boosting tourism numbers
One change meant to better handle crowds has been the recently expanded Peyto Lake lookout north of Lake Louise.
Matyas agreed that efforts to entice people to use public transportation have had an effect, though shuttle service seats to places such as Moraine Lake are snapped up fast.
“Those back up rather quickly — It’s definitely a plan-ahead message for regional audiences,” he said.
“The complexity of resources and land uses in this area necessitates a deliberate approach to planning and management,” the agency states on its website.
Late last month, the Alberta government noted Statistics Canada data showed that last year, visitors spent $12.7 billion in the province, exceeding 2022’s record-setting $10.7 billion by almost 20 per cent.
And the government also said $2.9 billion was spent by international visitors last year — 25 per cent over the previous record of $2.3 billion recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.
The province last February announced a goal of reaching annual visitor spending of $25 billion by 2035, and “as demonstrated by our record-breaking (2023) show that the strategy is working. We are well on our way to reaching our goal,” said Tourism and Sport Minister Joseph Schow.