Estimated visitors to the Yukon

Methodology

What counts as a visitor?

A visitor is a traveller taking a trip to a main destination outside their usual environment, for less than a year, and for any main purpose (business, leisure or personal) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the place visited.

This definition aligns with Statistics Canada's standards, as outlined in their Provincial and Territorial Tourism Satellite Account (PTTSA).

In the spending data, a person is only counted as a visitor once they travel at least 40 km outside their home location. This ensures that local spending is separated from tourism-related activity.

How we estimate visitor numbers using spending

We want to understand how many people are visiting the Yukon each month - not just once every few years. The Visitor Exit Survey is a trusted and detailed source of information, but it's only done every 5 to 10 years. To help us track visitor trends between surveys we use monthly visitor spending data from Destination Canada.

This lets us:

• Estimate how many people visit each month, based on how much money they spent.
• Model the total number of visitors for the year before the year is over.

This helps us see how tourism is changing over time, and how this year compares to others like 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where the information comes from

We use three main sources of data:

• Visitor Exit Survey (VES) – Collected by the Yukon Bureau of Statistics, this survey provides detailed monthly visitor numbers.
• Consumer Price Index (CPI) – This shows how the cost of things (like food, hotels, gas) changes over time. We use it to adjust for inflation.
• Visitor spending – This tells us how much money visitors spend in the Yukon each month. This comes from Destination Canada's Lodging Aligned Spend Reporting (LASR) .

What's new in 2024

In the past, we only counted visitors from outside Yukon. Starting in 2024, we are now including Yukoners in the total number of visitors. That means if someone from Whitehorse goes to Dawson for the weekend, they're now counted too - just like someone visiting from Alberta or Germany.

To make this change fair and accurate, we look at how much of the spending each month comes from Yukoners. This percentage changes monthly, and helps us adjust how we estimate the total number of people.

How we estimate visitor numbers

1. Fix for inflation
   • We start by adjusting the spending data for inflation.
   • This helps us compare months fairly, even if prices have gone up.


2. Calculate visitor ratio (including Yukoners)
   • Each month, we check what percentage of the total spending came from Yukoners.
   • We use that to estimate how many Yukoners and non-Yukoners were traveling in Yukon that month.
   • We calculate a new combined ratio that includes all visitor types, based on total adjusted spending.
   • This ratio shows us how much spending equals one visitor (no matter where they’re from).


3. Estimate visitor numbers
   • If we already have the real number of visitors from the Visitor Exit Survey, we use that.
   • If not, we use a ratio to estimate visitors from spending data.
   • A ratio tells us how much spending usually equals one visitor.
   • We use ratios from past years for the same month (e.g., July this year uses July from the most recent Visitor Exit Survey).
   • Then we multiply the adjusted spending by that ratio to get a visitor estimate.


4. Add it up
   • We total up the number of visitors for each month.
   • We also add the total for the year up to that point - this is called year-to-date (YTD).


5. Compare to last year
   • We check how each month's numbers compare to the same month last year.
   • We also compare YTD totals between years.
   • We calculate percentage differences to see if more or fewer people visited.


6. Compare to 2019
   • We also compare each YTD total to 2019 - a normal year before the pandemic.
   • This helps us see if visitation is back to normal levels.


7. Forecast the rest of the year
   • Once we have at least one month of real data for the current year, we use a model to forecast the rest.
   • The model looks at past years (especially 2019 and the most recent full year) to understand seasonal patterns – like summer peaks and slower winters.
   • It uses a method called Holt-Winters exponential smoothing, which is good at spotting regular trends and adjusting for them over time.
   • This forecast is updated automatically every month as new data comes in.
   • The result is a projection for the total number of visitors for the full year, even before the year is finished.


8. Limitations
   • This is just an estimate - it's not perfect, but it’s helpful.
   • We assume that when people spend more money, more of them are visiting.
   • We adjust for inflation so we’re not misled by rising prices.
   • Visitor numbers are rounded to the nearest hundred to avoid giving a false sense of precision.
   • We show a range of possible values (+5% to -5%) to reflect uncertainty in the model, not margin of error from survey sampling.
   • Using a range helps show that there isn’t one “correct” number - it gives a more realistic idea of what the true number could be, especially when we don’t have exact data.
   • Our year-end forecasts are based on patterns from recent years and assume those seasonal trends will continue. Unexpected changes (like new events or travel disruptions) may affect accuracy.