Canada’s heart is calling, but it might need to start shouting a little.

Travel Manitoba’s marketing campaign and slogan, aimed at drawing tourists to the province, could use a little more urgency, based on the latest available data.

Visitors to Manitoba in 2022 spent just over $1.8 billion, exceeding 2019’s record levels by about $160 million. That’s also far above the goal set earlier this year, to hit the $1.6-billion mark by 2024.

“We were surprised at that, so there is cautious optimism,” Travel Manitoba CEO Colin Ferguson said in an interview.

However, the number of tourists still lags well behind pre-pandemic levels.

According to data released Thursday by Travel Manitoba at its annual general meeting in Winnipeg, visits by Canadians to the province last year reached about 85 per Cent of the 2019 levels, while visits from the U.S. were nearly half the 2019 levels and visits by people from overseas were about a third.

Overall, the majority of visitors — 87 per cent — were Manitobans visiting other parts of the province. Ten per cent were from other Canadian provinces, 2.4 per cent from the U.S. and 0.45 per cent from overseas.

“It remains clear that Manitoba’s tourism industry still has a way to go from a recovery perspective, particularly for international markets,” Ferguson said.

“The tourism industry was one of the first industries hit by the pandemic, and we will be one of the last, if not the last, to fully recover.”

Inflation, economic uncertainty, labour shortages and air access continue to negatively affect the industry, he said, but noted at least one of those is starting to improve.

Direct flights between Winnipeg and Los Angeles, as well as Winnipeg-Atlanta and Winnipeg-Minneapolis have since come on board.

“We are hoping to get Chicago and Denver back, particularly to serve the U.S. angling and hunting markets,” Ferguson said.

Fly-in hunting and fishing camps, which rely heavily on international visitors, were hit particularly hard during the pandemic and have had a slow rebound.

However, the spending improvement is a sign the industry is headed in the right direction, Ferguson said.

In fact, the spending rate in Manitoba is ahead of the Canadian average, according to Travel Manitoba, which cited Statistics Canada.

The 2022 tourism spending exceeded 2019 by 10 per cent, while Canada as a whole was only three per cent above 2019 levels. Analysts say this is due to the fact that many parts of Canada rely more heavily on international travellers than Manitoba, and international travel has been slower to recover, the Travel Manitoba release said.

The hotel industry is also seeing positive signs with both revenue and occupancy exceeding 2019 levels last year. The occupancy levels were also ahead of the Canadian average, the release says.

However, those numbers are being taken with a grain of salt.

While leisure and business travel contributed, a portion is also due to housing people from around the province who were forced from their communities due to floods and fires, as well as newcomers, Ukrainian war refugees and construction and mining crews working in the province.

Ferguson said he is excited about the province’s new government, which was sworn in on Wednesday, because “they are very bullish on driving the economy … and we believe that the tourism industry is a key driver of that.”

“Once those visitation numbers increase and we start to move back toward 2019 [levels] and beyond, we will see even greater spending in the province,” he added.

“So I’d say the future is very strong in the tourism industry.” 

The Manitoba Tourism Strategy, a document that guides the growth and development of the province’s tourism industry, has set a target of 12.8 million visitors and $2.5 billion in visitor spending by 2030. That equates roughly to a 50 per cent growth in visitor spending levels compared to 2019.