The Travellers Tourism Kamloops Is Chasing, and Why We're Bringing Them to Your Door
When people ask us what we do, the short answer is easy: we work to bring more visitors to Kamloops. But the complete answer is a lot more interesting than that. We spend a significant amount of our time thinking about who those visitors are, where they're coming from, and what they're actually looking for when they choose to spend time here.
Because here's the thing about tourism in this city: it's not one type of traveller. It's five or six. And understanding that is part of how we do our jobs.
Understanding Our Visitors
The visitor most people picture is probably the outdoor DIY traveller. A family piling into the car from the Lower Mainland, chasing a real escape without a six-hour flight to get there. Room to move. Trails to explore. A river to paddle. Good food that doesn't require a reservation three weeks out. Kamloops delivers all of that, and the drive from Metro Vancouver is manageable enough that families with young kids can actually make it work. We see a lot of these folks, and we expect that Alberta market to keep growing as more people discover how accessible we are.
But the outdoor family is one piece of a much bigger picture.
The travel trade is a market that quietly drives significant mid-week business for Kamloops operators. International visitors from the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and the United States arrive here as part of larger BC touring itineraries, with the Rocky Mountaineer alone bringing roughly 90,000 guests through the city every year, six nights a week from April through October. What most people don't realize is that this traffic skews Sunday through Friday. For hotel partners and restaurant operators, that steady mid-week volume fills rooms on nights that would otherwise be quiet.
The same is true of our business travellers. They're here on weekdays, too, having lunch and dinner and extending their stays when something interesting is happening in town. That overlap matters more than it might seem.
And then there are the tournament families. Kamloops leaned hard into becoming the Tournament Capital of Canada starting back in 2003, and the City said yes to some serious infrastructure to make that happen. Twenty-plus years later, it shows. Teams travel here from across the province and country for hockey, soccer, swimming, and more. They come in the fall, winter, and spring, which means we're seeing consistent visitation year-round. These families don’t just spend their time at the rink. They’re shopping, eating out, and staying for multiple nights. We see a lot of repeat visitors through this stream, partly because Kamloops is known for being a genuinely good host.
One audience we don't talk about as publicly, but think about constantly, is our own community. Residents are our first audience in a lot of ways. They're the ones living the Kamloops experience every day, recommending restaurants, showing friends around, and deciding whether they feel good about visitors being here. If the community doesn't see the value of tourism, the whole thing falls apart. So a meaningful part of our work is making sure Kamloops residents understand what a healthy visitor economy actually delivers for them: infrastructure investments, year-round economic activity, things like the new skating loop at Riverside Park. We want people to feel proud of what's being built here, not indifferent to it.
The travellers we're focused on:
Why It Matters
Whether we're planning a campaign or sitting down with a local operator, the question is always the same: how does this make Kamloops a better place to live and visit? Visitors aren't looking for a hollow destination. They want genuine energy, real experiences, and people who are proud of where they live. The more Kamloops leans into that, the better.
We are always learning, and a lot of that learning starts with the people closest to the ground. If you're a local business or industry partner and you're seeing visitor patterns we should know about, we want to hear from you. Maybe you're noticing a geographic market we haven't tapped into, or an audience that's already showing up and asking for something we're not quite delivering yet. That kind of ground-level intelligence is invaluable. Reach out to us directly at Tourism Kamloops. These conversations make our work better.
