Tourism spending in Canada jumped the most in nearly 20 years in the third quarter of last year, official data showed on Thursday, pushed up in part by a weak Canadian dollar that has cut the cost of travel.
Statistics Canada said total spending by foreign and domestic tourists grew by 2.2 percent from the second quarter to hit C$21.3 billion (US$16.1 billion), the largest percentage increase since the second quarter of 1997. The figures are seasonally adjusted.
“It is a perfect storm of a lot of great conditions,” Rob Taylor of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada said, adding that the sagging domestic currency had kept Canadians at home while attracting more foreigners.
Photo: Bloomberg
The Canadian dollar has slumped in value on the back of a slide in oil prices. Last summer one US dollar bought around C$1.32, compared with C$1.06 two years previously.
Taylor suggested another reason for Canada’s popularity could be Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a close ally of US President Barack Obama who has traveled the world to promote Canada as a progressive nation.
“People are talking about Canada in a lot of different ways, [such as] the bromance with Obama,” Taylor said by telephone.
The Lonely Planet travel guide in October last year named Canada as the world’s top tourist destination for this year, saying one reason was Trudeau’s “wave of positivity.”
Canadian Tourism Research Institute associate director Gregory Hermus said there had been double-digit year-on-year growth from regions such as Europe and Asia last summer.
“The international markets were really gangbusters,” he said, citing moves by domestic carriers Air Canada and WestJet Airlines Ltd to increase capacity to overseas destinations.
“The exchange rate has an impact ... one of the prime competitors is the United States, so with the strong US dollar, Canada is looking much more price competitive,” he said.
Growth could be just as impressive this year, when Canada marks the 150th anniversary of its creation. The New York Times on Tuesday put the country at the top of a list of recommended destinations.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)