TIABC Voice of Tourism Newsletter – March 27, 2026

Shakespeare said it best when he said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

For those unfamiliar with the timeless romance of Romeo and Juliet, what Shakespeare was getting at is simple. A name does not change the true nature or intrinsic value of something; you can call it whatever you like and it still is what it is.

Tourism is one of those words, and it carries different meanings depending on who you ask. For some, it is travel and adventure, while for others it represents learning, connection, or a break from routine. It can feel like a personal, even emotional, experience, and many view it as discretionary rather than essential.

But placing the words “export” and “tourism” together may raise eyebrows. Most people do not instinctively think of tourism as an export sector, because we tend to associate exports with cargo ships, rail cars, pipelines, and containers crossing borders, and we think of lumber, minerals, energy, and manufactured goods as the kinds of things you can see, stack, and physically ship from one place to another.

Tourism does not look like that at first glance; it looks like people arriving at airports, families checking into hotels, and visitors booking guided tours. It feels local, it feels domestic, and it feels like something happening within our own communities rather than something traded across borders.

But here is the truth hiding in plain sight, and once you see it, it is hard to unsee. The Business Development Bank of Canada defines exporting as selling goods or services to buyers in another country, and other definitions reinforce this idea by focusing on selling goods or services to buyers from outside your country. When you apply that definition to tourism, the picture becomes very clear.

When a visitor from Germany lands in Vancouver and books a hotel, that is a service sold to an international buyer. When a family from California pays for a whale watching tour in Victoria, that is also a service sold to an international buyer. When a traveller from Japan dines in a restaurant in Whistler, the same principle applies. The transaction happens here while the dollars originate elsewhere, making it an export even if it does not look like one in the traditional sense.

Now, with that lens, the scale of tourism starts to look very different, because it is no longer just an experience economy or a lifestyle sector. It is no longer simply about hospitality or guest services, and it is certainly not a side conversation in the broader economic picture. It is one of Canada’s largest export industries, and it deserves to be understood that way.

In fact, tourism’s export value in Canada is the second highest just behind the oil and gas sector, a statement that tends to make people pause and reconsider their assumptions. This is not a marginal contributor to the economy, nor is it somewhere down the list of priorities, it is near the very top.

Tourism generates over $130 billion through the export of services. To put that into perspective, that is more than three times the value of forestry exports. This comparison is not intended to diminish any other sector, because forestry, mining, and energy are all foundational to British Columbia and to Canada as a whole. However, tourism deserves to stand in that same conversation, alongside it as a core economic driver, not adjacent to it or behind it.

There is, however, a subtle misconception that often shows up in conversations about tourism, and it usually sounds something like this. People will say that visitors are spending their money here within our borders, and they question how that can truly be considered an export. It is a fair question, and on the surface it feels logical, but it misses a critical detail that changes the entire interpretation.

Exports are not defined by where the money is spent, but rather by where the buyer comes from. If the buyer is international and they are purchasing goods or services from Canada, then that transaction is an export regardless of where it physically takes place. Tourism simply delivers that export in a different way. Instead of shipping the product across the border, we invite the customer to come to the product. This means we are not sending Canada out into the world in a physical sense but rather bringing the world into Canada in a very real and measurable way.

When visitors arrive, they purchase our experiences, our landscapes, our culture, our food, our expertise, and our hospitality. In doing so we are effectively exporting Canada itself, which is both powerful and uniquely different from traditional export models.

When you begin to reframe tourism in this way, something interesting starts to happen, because it changes how we think about the industry at every level. It sharpens the conversation around policy, elevates the importance of infrastructure, reframes workforce challenges in a more strategic light, and changes how we think about investment.

We are no longer talking about an industry that is simply serving visitors, but rather one that is competing globally for export dollars. That brings an entirely different level of urgency and opportunity to the table. This distinction matters because export industries are growth engines that expand the economic pie rather than simply circulating existing dollars within it. They create new opportunities, support jobs, and drive economic activity in ways that extend far beyond the initial transaction.

Tourism does exactly that, often in ways that are both visible and invisible at the same time. It supports small businesses in rural communities, drives demand for transportation, accommodation, and food services, fuels arts, culture, and events across the province, and creates employment across a wide range of skill levels and career stages. It connects urban centres to remote regions in a way that very few industries can achieve. In a province as diverse as BC, that kind of connectivity is not just beneficial; it’s essential.

So perhaps the issue is not what tourism is, but rather what we choose to call it and how that shapes our perception of its value. When we call it travel or hospitality, we unintentionally shrink it and limit how seriously it is taken. When we describe it as an experience, we soften it in a way that makes it feel optional rather than foundational. When we treat it as discretionary, we push it to the sidelines without fully appreciating its economic impact.

But when we call it what it truly is—an export industry—everything begins to shift decisively. The lens sharpens, the stakes become clearer, and the opportunity becomes far more difficult to ignore.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but in the case of tourism, the name we choose shapes how seriously we take it and how we position it for the future. It is time for governments at every level to treat tourism as the export engine it is: to place it front and centre in economic strategy, to reflect its value in budgets and investment decisions, and to ensure that policies, infrastructure, and workforce planning align with the scale of its contribution to Canada’s economy.

Amber Papou, B.Ed, MBA, ICD.D

CEO, TIABC