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Yukon Tourism Industry Welcomes Funding

Friday, 23 October 2020 09:40

The first of many programs to be announced from the Yukon Tourism Recovery Plan is the Tourism Accommodation Sector Supplement (TASS). This program adds $2.88 million to the Yukon Business Relief Program in supports for eligible accommodations businesses.

The Yukon Government announced it will commit millions in new crisis support funding to assist tourism in the Yukon over the next three years. This much-needed support comes as welcome news to an ailing industry.

The first of many programs to be announced from the Yukon Tourism Recovery Plan is the Tourism Accommodation Sector Supplement (TASS). This program adds $2.88 million to the Yukon Business Relief Program in supports for eligible accommodations businesses.

TIA Yukon Chair Neil Hartling highlighted the importance of this funding, stating that “Yukon’s accommodations are crucial to our industry. The industry welcomes this next step in relief for the tourism crisis and commends the Yukon Government’s continued response as the COVID situation evolves.”

With no way of knowing when travel restrictions will be able to be eased, the commitment to a multi-year investment in the industry is crucial. TIA Yukon Executive Director Blake Rogers called YG’s announcement a “strategic investment for tourism recovery that will provide some much-needed certainty during some very uncertain times.”

Rogers and Hartling noted the importance of sustaining the tourism infrastructure that took decades to
build and retaining the talented, skilled, and knowledgeable workers that tourism businesses have worked hard to foster. 

"Territorial and federal funding programs that were rapidly launched in the first months of the pandemic in response to the urgent need have been essential in keeping the industry afloat to this point”, said Hartling. “These programs continue to prove their importance as the crisis unfolds, but it’s clear that more robust, longer term supports like those attached to the announcement this week will also be needed to get us through to the other side of this.” 

TIA Yukon emphasized that cooperation between governments, political parties, and stakeholders will be vital to the industry’s recovery.

More details about the Yukon Government’s announcement on tourism support are expected in the weeks to come.

 

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