Because my wife, Patricia, and I are a hair’s breath away from celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary, we asked our family to all get together last month in Mexico to celebrate. We had a wonderful time, and I am encouraging her to write a column about that soon; so, I won’t go into the personal side of our trip. What I do want to talk about for a moment, however, are a few things I noticed as a resident of a tourist community visiting another tourist destination.
The plane Patricia and I boarded in Philadelphia was a wide-body, double-aisle aircraft carrying several hundred passengers, non-stop, to Cancan; furthermore, and surprising to me, there was another flight leaving for the same airport two hours later. When we arrived and were picking up our luggage, I looked around and saw direct flights coming in from all around North America.
During the time we spent in our resort, I made it a point to talk to a number of people to find out why they had specifically chosen Cancun. As it turned out, about a half dozen people I spoke with were Canadian and all but one said that their exchange rate to our dollar was an overriding factor in determining to go to Mexico vs. the U.S.
One mentioned that some American destinations are offering them an even exchange rate as an inducement, saying: “When you have to put out $125 Canadian to get only $90 U.S. back, it gets your attention.” The reality for us here in Cape May County might not be as bad as it sounded to me while talking to them. While the Canadians had to shell out up to $1.46 a half year ago for a U.S. dollar, it is now only $1.28, which is about what they paid a year ago. The problem for Cape May County may come, however, if they were looking at a $1.46 exchange rate months back when they were making their vacation plans.
Exacerbating our problem somewhat is the fact that they can buy even more pesos now with their dollar than they could last year. I was informed that the Canadian government is now encouraging their citizens to stay home and visit Canada this year, where their money loses no purchasing power. One family went out of their way to encourage us to visit Canada and take advantage of our increased purchasing power up there.
One older Canadian gentleman told me that he had come to Cancun at the encouragement of his children who were also there, but he would not go back, saying: “When I go to a beach resort, I love to go into the water, but you can’t do that here because of the rocky coral. I went in and fell five times.” Fortunately for us, we have fine-grain sand, and no coral!
So, are we going to see our Canadian friends here again in numbers this summer? Since we don’t have a crystal ball, it’s never a bad idea to reach out to them now, and encourage them just as that Canadian lady encouraged me: “Canada is a wonderful place to visit, and we would be so delighted to have you visit us!”
Art Hall
From the Bible: O Lord my God, many and many times you have done great miracles for us, and we are always in your thoughts. Who else can do such glorious things? No one else can be compared with you. Psalm 40:5
Cape May – The number one reason I didn’t vote for Donald Trump was January 6th and I found it incredibly sad that so many Americans turned their back on what happened that day when voting. I respect that the…
