Still Cheaper To Holiday in the States than B.C.

[Dean2]

Despite a 73 cent dollar, and higher costs of everything in the States it is still WAY cheaper holidaying there than in B.C. Just got back from 14 days in the States, gas runs 30 to 70 cents a litre cheaper there than here in Alberta, and gas in B.C. is 30 to 40 cents cents a litre higher than here.

Restaurants in the States still serve very large portions, most of the time enough for two of us, but even on individual plates, converted prices are about the same or a bit less than here. Groceries are 20 to 30% cheaper. Booze is about half for Canadian made liquor, $27 for 1750 ML of Seagrams Rye in Utah, and WAY cheaper than that for commonly sold stuff like Vodka, Beer and Bourbon.

Access to various venues is also Cheaper. A 2 day pass to 5 museums, being the Cody Firearms museum, Natural History Museum, Art Gallery, Buffalo Bill Cody Museum and Indian History Museum was $22 per person for the 2 day, all inclusive pass. You can get a vehicle pass that covers the vehicle and 4 passengers, good for the whole year at all National Parks, BLM and many State Parks for $80. The same pass in Canada is $151 and only covers the National Parks.

Hotel rooms ran from 100 Canadian to about 300 Canadian, depending on location and how fancy the digs were. These were all Hampton, Hilton or Marriott owned hotels. When we priced 14 days of Hotels on the B.C. Gold Coast they were running from 200 to $500 a night for basically Super 8/Holiday Inn Express 2 Star hotel type quality rooms. I could rarely find Hilton etc type 3 star hotels. Top of the brand heap seemed to be some Best Western banner hotels in a few locations but most were stand alone motels and hotels of ancient vintage.

When you add $2-300 a pop for each ferry ride, and you need at least 4 of those, plus the higher costs of fuel, food and lodging, the bill for 14 days ratchets up really fast. Back of the envelope calculation, it was going to be nearly $10,000 for 14 days, same time in the States ran less than $4,000 Canadian.

Pretty hard to make the case to visit the Bring Cash Province at those prices, and especially with the amount of demonstrated animosity they have to Albertans, and that animosity was abundantly on display the last couple of years during Covid.

It will be interesting to see if the tourism being WAY down in 2023 and 2024 has any effect on the attitudes in B.C. and/or the pricing profiles. Somehow I think it will take a few more years for it to sink in.