With less people traveling and more people vacationing in their own province, room-nights-sold to Islanders shows an increase of 33%.

“When you look at the Report, you can see a mix of numbers – some good and some not as good as we would like to see,” said Valerie Docherty, Minister of Tourism. “Global tourism is facing shifts in markets and visitation numbers. Prince Edward Island is very much holding its own considering the strong potential to break even at the end of the 2008 season – with that said, we must focus our sights on 2009 and address with industry how we get these numbers up.”

The ferry traffic is down 5% and bridge traffic is down 9%, but the air traffic is still showing increases of 17% for the month of August. Visitors from Germany and Japan are contributing to a 24.5% increase in International visitation. The cruise traffic continues to show steady growth while motorcoach is reporting an 8.1% increase year-to-date.

“The Tourism Advisory Council (TAC) is taking the drop in traffic very seriously,” said David MacKenzie, Past Chair of the Council. “Given the current tourism climate in Canada, we are encouraged by our industry’s performance, however, TAC is continuing to work closely with Tourism PEI to ensure we are aggressively looking at market opportunities for growth in 2009 and beyond.”

Tourism performance indicators are released to the public monthly and can be downloaded at www.gov.pe.ca/tourism.