Fewer people entered Canada via the Yukon for the second consecutive year, show data recently released by the Department of Tourism and Culture.

Canadian border crossings into the Yukon in 2015 were down four per cent from 2014, according to the December 2015 Yukon Tourism Visitation Report.

However, airplane passenger arrivals into Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport were up two per cent last year compared to the year before.

The department counted border crossings, train and air passengers and vehicles on the highways to estimate the number of visitors to the Yukon in 2015, and the report is a compilation of those figures.

Yukon Liberal Leader Sandy Silver pressed the government Monday on why tourism statistics for last fall and winter were not readily available until now.

“Nothing past July was on the government’s website until last week,” Silver told the legislature.

He later added that, “The full year-end stat report is usually released by the annual TIA (Tourism Industry Association) conference in the spring. I didn’t see anybody talking about it, and I do not believe that it has been tabled yet.”

The conference was held in Whitehorse late last week.

Elaine Taylor, the minister of Tourism and Culture, said the numbers were delayed due to “reporting challenges in 2015,” but that now all the data have been analyzed and are publicly available.

“We are certainly committed to ensuring that we have the best information available for businesses to help maximize their revenues to help return the best return on investment for our businesses,” she said.

Border crossings were down for the second year in a row after peaking at about 350,000 in 2013, according to the report.

A total of 327,778 people crossed the border into Yukon in 2015. That’s 13,929 (four per cent) fewer people than in 2014.

But according to Blake Rogers, TIA’s executive director, the number of flights landing at the Whitehorse airport is a better indicator of where tourism is at right now – on the rise, according to the visitation report.

“That’s probably the most accurate indicator,” Rogers told the Star this morning.

The increase in airline arrivals is in line with the growth he’s been hearing about from the tourism industry, he added.

“According to what we’ve heard, it was good year,” he said.

“Obviously it’s broad strokes; there may have been some people for whom it was a bad year, but overall ... all indications were that the numbers were up and that Yukon tourism continues to grow.”

Rogers pointed to the Yukon Now marketing campaign, which in March received a renewed government investment of $2.7 million over three years.

“The Yukon Now campaign has had a big impact on visitor travel from Canada,” he said.

According to Rogers, non-resident camping at Yukon campgrounds is up 14 per cent, visits to historic sites are up are eight per cent, and trips to Kluane National Park have risen six per cent.

Still, it’s worth noting that American and international trips to the Yukon appear to be down, despite the low Canadian dollar.

(The Canadian dollar fell below to $0.71 US at its lowest in 2015, and didn’t rise above $0.86 US.)

Excluding Yukoners, who accounted for 6,778 of those passing through Canadian customs, border crossings were down two per cent in 2015 compared to 2014.

The vast majority – 67 per cent – of people who came into Canada through the Yukon in 2015 were American.

The next largest chunk was travellers from overseas (13 per cent), and the rest were Canadians, 11 per cent of whom were Yukon residents and nine per cent of whom were from elsewhere in the country.

Part of the reason American visits are down, said Rogers, is because Alaska cut its own marketing budget.

This may impact the number of contiguous Americans who travel through the Yukon to get to the state.

“They’re going through some hard times on that side of the border, just in the way that the economy is going there,” said Rogers.

Silver asked the government Monday for its take on why there appears to be a downward trend in border crossings into the Yukon, to which Taylor responded:

“Despite those reporting challenges that we experienced last year – that, I might add, were external to the Yukon government – Yukon’s tourism industry has indicated that 2015 was a good year for tourism overall and a number of those tourism indicators do support that perspective.”