A student here is looking for data on the number of foreign tourists in British Columbia.
He would like to obtain monthly data for the number of foreigners in British Columbia, engaged in each of the following activities, over the past 5 or 10 years.
- Skiing/snowboarding
- Sightseeing
- Visiting national parks
- Shopping
- Hiking
- Visiting beaches
The International Travel Survey doesn’t get into that level of detail, as far as I can tell; the Travel Survey of Residents of Canada has closer to that level of detail, but isn`t for foreign visitors.
Do you know if such data exist and are available? I have contacted the organization: DestinationBC, to ask if they might provide such data for a student who wishes to use them for a data analytics class. I also sent him a link to the data set on OpenDataBC, on the numbers of visitors to visitor information centres.Where else can he look?
Answer
Have a look at <http://bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/Tourism.asp x>, unfortunately the data they provide doesn't get down to the activity level in detail, but it does provide break downs for foreign tourists.
The Room Revenue Statistics <http://bcstats.gov.bc.ca/Files/c071216f-989d-42ea-9a8c-f68e885274ec/TourismRoomRevenue1303.xlsx> provides data for specific locations that the student could cross correlate with information on popular tourist type activities. For example, Tourism Vancouver statistics available at: <http://www.tourismvancouver.com /media/marketing-research/>. Most of the other economic regions/ municipalities in B.C. will have similar types of information.
There is a good guide to finding addition statistics called "WHERE TO GO FOR MORE TOURISM RESEARCH INFORMATION BC, CANADIAN, & INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SOURCE LIST" available at:<http://www.tourismvancouver.com /pdf/research/where_to_go_tourism_research.pdf>.
National Parks Attendance statistics found at:<http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/pc/attend/ notes.aspx> and they could check the BC Parks website for <http://www.env.gov. bc.ca/bcparks/>. As you have already indicated the destination BC web site's Tourism Indicator: <http://www.destinationbc.ca/Research/Industry-Performance/Tourism-Indicators.aspx#.VQxJrPzF-Ag> has good information.
