THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408160148
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PAM STARR
LENGTH: Long : 158 lines
EVERY SUMMER for the last seven years Denis and Gina St. Amour have driven 16 hours from Montreal to Virginia Beach to camp out for three weeks.
They take along Gina's son, 10-year-old Michel, her parents, Diego and Gaetana Grifo, and three tents - two for sleeping and one for eating. The St. Amours could stay in an Oceanfront hotel or a bed and breakfast, like thousands of other French Canadians, but they prefer getting back to nature at the 1,000-site Holiday Trav-L Park off General Booth Boulevard.
``I love camping - it grows on you,'' said Gina one humid morning at their campsite. ``You can have three weeks holiday when you camp and you can cook your own food. It's really nice for everyone.''
Quebec is second only to Washington, D.C., as Virginia Beach's leading tourism market. The 148,000 Quebecers who visit Virginia Beach each year collectively spend an average $63.5 million while they're here. Tourists such as the St. Amours stay longer and spend more money than the average tourist, said Hester Waterfield, tourism marketing manager with Virginia Beach's Department of Convention and Visitor Development.
``Beaches are very important to French Canadians,'' Waterfield said. ``We have a very active advertising and promotional market in Quebec - they represent 8 to 10 percent of our tourism.''
But this year the Canadian dollar's value has shrunk and many area businesses have noticed a decline in those formerly free-spending tourists. It now takes $1.40 in Canadian currency to equal an American dollar. Last year it cost Canadians $1.15 for every American dollar.
Nicole Labonte, a French Canadian who hosts a travel show in Quebec, said that some French Canadians have turned to camping as a way to make their dollar stretch further while others are staying fewer nights or not returning at all. Labonte filmed a show in Virginia Beach in May 1993 that aired in Quebec last summer.
``Yes, the dollar devaluation hurts,'' said Labonte, Virginia Beach's tourism representative in the French Canadian market. ``But it does give a person incentives. For Quebec tourists, Virginia Beach is a natural as a car destination. Gas is cheaper in Canada - it's easy to convince them to drive down here.''
All of the French Canadians who camp at the Holiday Trav-L Park drive there. Assistant manager Phil Upton said that French Canadian business is down slightly from last year, but they also have more first-time campers from Quebec. A whopping 50 percent of Holiday Trav-L Park's campers are Quebecers.
Upton, a French Canadian who has been married to campground owner Ginny Bosher for four years, said that if they didn't have the Quebec business they would be hurting.
``We're about 60 percent full this year,'' said Upton, who speaks English with a precise, clipped accent. ``The declining dollar is affecting us - we've had a drop but not a significant one.''
Upton has an obvious edge over the competition since he often translates for the non-English speaking campers and helps them if their cars need to be repaired or they have a medical emergency. The Canadian Automobile Association calls him frequently for campers and he says that many Quebecers come to their campground because of the sheer number of other French Canadians.
``Our Quebec business is by word of mouth,'' said Upton. ``We do try to accommodate the French Canadians more - we offer menus, rules and signs in both languages. We try to make it as bilingual as possible.''
That's what the city of Virginia Beach did more than 15 years ago when it recognized the number of French Canadians visiting here. In addition to those familiar blue ``Welcome to Virginia Beach'' signs posted on Shore Drive, Northampton Boulevard and Virginia Beach Boulevard, the city erected ``Bienvenue a'' signs as a gesture of goodwill, said Waterfield. Three months ago a resident appeared before the city's Human Rights Commission and questioned whether one ethnic group should be singled out like that.
But city officials have no plans to remove the signs.
``Those signs represent the international market,'' Waterfield said. ``The U.S. Travel and Tourism department told us that French-speaking citizens represented a primary market. Well over 90 percent of them drive - we call them our rubber tire market.
``They do spend more money and are more likely to return - their repeat visitation is 66 percent.''
Yves and Lucie Fournel of Montreal returned to the Beach this summer after a six-year hiatus. They used to vacation in Cape May, N.J., but opted to drive further to Virginia Beach because the water is warmer and cleaner and the locals are friendlier, said Lucie. The Fournels recently spent two weeks at Angie's Guest Cottage on 24th Street, a bed and breakfast owned by Barbara Yates that caters to French Canadians and Europeans.
``Here the beaches are very clean,'' Lucie said over breakfast one morning on the large front porch. ``It's a very beautiful beach. In Quebec we don't have those beaches. The water is so cold and the weather so uncertain.''
The Fournels were eating with Robert, Johanne and Ingrid Paradis, another family from Montreal whom they had met two days earlier. This was the second visit to Virginia Beach for the Paradises, who had vacationed here 10 years ago, but it marked the first time they had stayed in a bed and breakfast. The Paradises admitted that the Canadian dollar's decline forced them to cut corners. They had originally planned to stay seven days but trimmed it to four. Each family said that their vacation costs between $150 and $200 a day.
Both families found that they did the same things on vacation nearly every day - walk on the beach first, eat breakfast, lay out, eat lunch, go back to the beach, visit a restaurant, do a little shopping and listen to the bands at the 24th Street Park before retiring for the night.
``The stage is very nice - that was one thing that was missing before,'' said Johanne, clad in a bikini with a towel wrapped around her waist. ``There was nothing to do at night.''
One person who doesn't think the French Canadian business has been hurt by the Canadian dollar's inflation is Henry Richardson, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association and owner of the Comfort and Rodeway inns at the Oceanfront.
``Their currency is in a state of fluctuation but people generally make plans to go on vacation,'' said Richardson. ``I got a ton of them. Those of us who do aggressive marketing don't overlook the Canadian markets. My sales director is up there (Quebec) three times a year.''
Nicole Labonte stayed in Richardson's Comfort Inn and said that the renovation of the Oceanfront has ``definitely helped'' the tourism business with French Canadians. She maintains that more Quebecers have stayed home this year, but added that the renovation has not been overlooked by that market.
``We are very impressed with the renovation of the city,'' she said. ``It is a better quality vacation spot with more to offer now.
``Virginia Beach is neat, it's clean and calm - it has class!'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by Mort Fryman
Robert and Johanne Paradis and their daughter, Ingrid, vacation in
Virginia Beach. The family is from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[color
cover photo]
Teenager Ingrid Paradis of Montreal rides the waves at the
Oceanfront. She is visiting Virginia Beach with her parents, Robert
and Johanne Paradis.
Phil Upton, assistant manager of Holiday Trav-L Park, said 50
percent of the campers are Quebecers.
ABOVE: Gina and Denis St. Amour and her son, Michel, 10, prefer
camping out when they vacation in Virginia Beach so they can afford
to stay longer.
BELOW: Lucie and Yves Fournel, seated, from Montreal, like the
comfort of Angie's Guest Cottage, a bed and breakfast owned by
Barbara Yates, left. They say they come south to the Beach because
the water's warmer, the beach is cleaner and the locals are
friendlier than at northern beaches.
ABOUT QUEBECERS
French Canadians make up about 80 percent of Quebec's population,
nearly all of them descendants of French settlers who came to Quebec
in the 1600s and 1700s.
French is the official language of Quebec and three-fifths of the
people speak only French. About one-fourth of the population speak
both French and English. By contrast, the province of Ontario,
which lies next to Quebec, is mostly English-speaking.
Source: World Book Encyclopedia, '94.
KEYWORDS: TOURISM VIRGINIA BEACH by CNB