Tightening restrictions for houseboat going to impact industry in interior
Posted July 23, 2020 9:10 pm.
KAMLOOPS (NEWS 1130) — During the COVID-19 era, the houseboat industry has needed to make changes to their business but with new restrictions announced by the province Thursday, frustration is building in the interior.
The province introduced an order requiring rental properties from houseboats to limit the number of guests and visitors to help curb transmission of COVID-19.
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Todd Kyllo, is president of Twin Anchors Houseboat Vacations in Shuswap and says the province isn’t properly consulting his industry for new COVID measures.
“We’ve had no government influence whatsoever, no help from the B.C. government on any tourism dollars that we’ve lost,” he says. “And I haven’t seen any upcoming news of, you know, any help from them.”
To keep the business afloat, Kyllo says implementing all new cleaning, booking, and orientation procedures take more time but adds people booking time on the water and shows patience with the guidelines.
“We used to check in four groups at once, now we’re checking in two,” he says. “We used to do orientations, so we’d grab maybe five or six captains off of five or six boats and go do one orientation on boat, now we do individual orientations.”
Kyllo adds using their services is actually a better way to keep your distance since it’s easy to be segregated from a crowd.
“There’s 30 provincial parks here that you can’t access by car, only by boat so … it’s only going to be the boat traffic there.”
