WATCH: Weather doesn’t deter tourists

This long weekend marks the unofficial start to the summer tourism season. The cool and cloudy conditions didn’t seem to keep the visitors away.

Tourism operators say they are happy with the spike in business, and hope the trend continues into the summer months.

“It’s historically the kick off to our high tourism season and proved to be no different this year,” says Tourism Kelowna’s Catherine Frechette

Today’s sunshine was a welcome sight but despite the cloudy and at times wet conditions over the weekend, Tourism Kelowna says by all accounts it looks like the weather didn’t deter visitors from coming to the Okanagan.

“The hotels reporting they were busy there were lots of people downtown over the weekend wine tours were also very active this weekend and 45:30 at the visitor centre lots of people were asking about wine touring getting out on lake and going hiking especially on KVR,” says Frechette.

Even with not the most favorable weather, Bear Creek Provincial campground was overflowing with campers.

“You were completely packed ? Oh absolutely, yeah we had people parked in parking lot. Despite the weather? Absolutely,” says campground manager Patrick Lacey.

Every year 1.5 million tourists visit the Central Okanagan.