Canadian exchange rate remains low, but leveling out

As the Black Friday shopping flood drains from the Flathead this weekend, the local retail and hospitality industries are gauging how much Canadian traffic to expect this winter.

“They (the Canadians) are here for Black Friday, but it’s not a huge amount” said Wes Harries, front office manager at the Best Western Rocky Mountain Lodge in Whitefish. “It’s more noticeable in the winter, when it’s more Canadians than anyone else.”

Winter is the true test of Canadian visitation, and that number is relative to the northern neighbor’s exchange rate, which has been hovering around a 30-cents difference from the U.S. dollar since mid-2015. According to the Bank of Canada, the exchange rate finished October with the Canadian loonie at 75 cents against the U.S. dollar. That’s down from the 2016-high of 78 cents on the dollar in April, but higher than January, when it was worth 70 cents U.S.

At the Hampton Inn in Kalispell, manager Sergio Barba said that despite the unfavorable exchange rate, Canadian guests are still coming down.

“It’s 50-50” between Canadian and U.S. visitors, Barba said. “We get more Canadian visitors at this hotel.”

Canada’s natural resource-heavy economy has taken a hit from a fall in oil prices and commodities over the last year, and Alberta’s oil sands have been a focal point of the economic slide.

Dylan Boyle, executive director at the Whitefish Convention and Visitors Bureau, said this kind of fluctuation is what tourist-heavy markets like Whitefish often deal with.

“Just looking back historically, we’ve seen the up and down with the exchange rate as long as we’ve had Canadian visitors in Whitefish, since the ski resort opened,” he said. “The number of Canadian visitors aren’t spending like they did in 2014, but they are visiting.”

IF 2016 has shown anything for the exchange rate, it’s some stability.

“To some point, it has stabilized,” Boyle said.

At the Kalispell Convention and Visitors Bureau, executive director Diane Medler also noted things leveling out.

“It hasn’t gotten a whole lot better, it hasn’t gotten a whole lot worse either,” Medler said. “Although they’re still visiting, they are not spending as much.”

The state’s bed tax is one way the visitor bureaus are able to measure visitors, although it’s not country-specific.

Kalispell’s bed tax is up slightly from last year at this time, $976,433 compared to $974,236, even though the loonie’s average has been lower this year. Just 15 miles north, Whitefish’s bed tax is up almost $110,000 from last year.

Aside from the currency difference, Canadians still traveled into the Flathead last year. Medler said from her reports, Alberta is still the No. 2 residency of origin for nonresident travelers through Flathead County. That’s 13 percent of all visitors, she said, while British Columbia accounts for 3 percent.

LOOKING AHEAD into the winter months, small changes in the hospitality and tourism industries are making the cost easier on the Canadians. Several shops last winter reported offering deals to Canadian consumers to dampen the blow of their low-weight loonie.

Over the summer, a number of new hotels opened in the Flathead from the Cedar Creek Lodge in Columbia Falls, the Firebrand Hotel in Whitefish, or the Marriott Springhill Suites in Kalispell. Medler said the new lodging opportunities means existing hotels drop their prices to retain guests.

“There’s always kind of a shifting redistribution of things,” she said. “The existing properties will lower their rates to get their same occupancies.”

While the Whitefish Convention and Visitors Bureau has never made Canada a core of its marketing efforts, Boyle said total nonresident visitation to the area is still on the rise.

“Summer was really strong. Glacier National Park [visitation] was up, Glacier Park International Airport was up and Amtrak ridership was up,” Boyle said, adding that wildfires were less deterring this year compared to 2015. “We had a really strong summer and of that was really strong domestic travel.”

Medler said even though the Canadian economic outlook isn’t forecast to make a major rebound anytime soon, the benefits that initially drew Canadians over the border still exist for those who come.

“It’s a great long weekend trip and they know our cost of goods here is still lower and we don’t have any sales tax,” Medler said. “If their dollar can be a little bit stronger, we can see a positive impact.”

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.