The COVID-19 pandemic has been “totally devastating for the tourism industry,” says the president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick (TIANB).
Since the province declared a state of emergency in an effort to slow the spread of novel coronavirus, locking down all but essential services and businesses, Carol Alderdice says they’ve been surveying tourism operators, and the most recent survey with 107 respondents offers a “scary” statistic when businesses were asked to project where they’ll be in the next three months. “‘Closing the business temporarily’ is 70 per cent, but ‘closing the business permanently’ is the scary one at 18 per cent,” Alderice tells Global News.