COVID-19 hammers YLW and hotel tax revenue

It won’t come as a surprise, but some hard numbers are in on the damage done to Okanagan tourism this year.

City of Vernon Economic Development and Tourism manager Kevin Poole reports hotel tax revenue that is used for promoting the area will likely be less than half of what it was in 2019.

The room revenue was in $36.7 million in 2019, as of July, the figure was just $7.1 million. The tax revenue dropped from $1,022,958 in 2019 to just over $198,000 to the end of July, although a number of payments have yet to be made.

Meantime, Kelowna International Airport, which had been experiencing record year after record year for travel numbers is also way down due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.