TIABC Voice of Tourism Newsletter – May 23, 2025

Back in my radio days, weekends were often reserved for ‘remotes’ where I received a few extra shekels to be onsite at a local business doing “live cut-ins” to entice listeners to visit and ideally buy something.

One summer, I spent every other Saturday at a Toyota dealership in Richmond. And each time I was there a quiet, unassuming, elderly gentleman would show up to trade in his “old” car for a new one. Although a hard guy to get to know, he eventually told me that he was a retired dentist with no family and was spending (or losing) his sizeable life savings to treat himself to a new vehicle every two weeks for the remainder of his driving days. I was secretly hoping he would adopt me and bequeath his last new car to a poor, young radio shlep, but I digress.

For some reason I was reminded of that experience after I heard the CEO of Lufthansa tell his global executives, affiliates and partners that the German-based airline purchases a new airplane every two weeks to meet global demand for air travel. They are also refurbishing a huge part of their fleet to satisfy customer expectations. At the same meeting, the CEO of Star Alliance partner Air Canada told the group that his company is acquiring up to 90 new planes to largely service the expanding US market and to meet their revenue target of $30 billion by 2030 (currently $22b). The dollars being invested in new equipment alone are staggering, let alone all the other facets of their business. On a side note, delivery of their new planes has been delayed by more than a year.

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to talk about Canada’s tourism sector during a morning plenary session at Lufthansa’s Americas Marketing Conference in Montreal. During my brief time there, I learned that Lufthansa has very aggressive expansion plans and is in the process of taking over ITA Airways (Italian) to complement their roster of SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings. More importantly, they are also building a massive facility in Calgary in partnership with WestJet to expand their world-leading maintenance, repair and overhaul division for civilian commercial aircraft.

Clearly Lufthansa views Canada as paramount to their corporate strategy. In fact, of the 500 trans-Atlantic flights they operate weekly, dozens are destined for Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Considering Germany is a key international market for British Columbia and Canada, regular service by Lufthansa to complement Air Canada’s lift is critical.

By way of background, Lufthansa’s global executive team and company affiliates gather annually to discuss route development, pricing, cargo, tariffs, sales, regulations, supply chain, partnerships, expansion, collaboration, and other matters that airlines deal with in a highly competitive, complex, global aviation eco-system. This was the first time they met in Canada.

One of the other topics raised by Air Canada related to BC’s low carbon fuels program which mandates that suppliers incorporate low carbon jet fuel (LCJF) into fossil jet fuel (referred to as sustainable aviation fuel – SAF), starting at 1% in 2028, increasing to 2% in 2029 and 3% in 2030. The regulations also include a carbon intensity (CI) reduction requirement for jet fuel that scales up starting in 2026.

It’s a subject I’ve highlighted in this space before given that BC is the only jurisdiction in Canada with regulations pertaining to SAF that I’m told could put it at a competitive disadvantage. The airlines are raising the alarm by stating that in order to achieve up to two-thirds of their net-zero emissions targets over the next 25 years, some 5,000 SAF production facilities will be needed around the world. Currently there are 15 and none in Canada.

If you’re a regular reader, you may have deduced that I view transportation, especially the aviation sector, to be one of the most pressing priorities that TIABC needs to focus on for the foreseeable future. Given the current socio-political and economic climate in North America and in Europe where discretionary travel is more at risk, doing everything we can to ensure the seamless movement of people to and within BC is critical to leveraging tourism’s full potential, as well as protecting jobs and businesses.

Aside from the opportunity to educate the Lufthansa Group on BC and Canada’s tourism sector, I took advantage of the time to learn about a major transportation provider’s corporate objectives and corresponding challenges of doing business in Canada. It was especially helpful to inform ongoing lobbying efforts on behalf of the aviation sector but now also incorporating the concerns of key international suppliers like Lufthansa who are directly impacted but often overlooked in the development of federal policies and regulations. Special thanks to Air Canada and their Star Alliance partner for the invitation to participate in the Montreal meeting.

As for the old, retired dentist who purchased a new car every two weeks in the summer of 85…eventually the radio remotes ended and I never saw him again nor did I receive any adoption papers. Once in a while though when I drive by the dealership I wonder if the good doctor ever got bored of owning every make and model that Toyota produced that year, how long it took him to run out of his life savings, and who inherited his last car with barely 100 miles on the odometer.

Walt Judas

CEO, TIABC