Jays fans help Seattle amid tourism slide

Pike Place Market artist and vendor Daniel Fleming says Toronto Blue Jays fans typically show up in Seattle in droves for games against the Mariners, and the ongoing American League Championship Series has been no different.

SEATTLE – Pike Place Market artist and vendor Daniel Fleming says Toronto Blue Jays fans typically show up in Seattle in droves for games against the Mariners, and the ongoing American League Championship Series has been no different.

He said the city and market seem insulated from political tensions between Canada and the United States that have seen Canadian visits south plunge.

“Toronto Blue Jays fandom travels maybe as well as any other fandom I’ve ever encountered,” Fleming said Thursday. “They come to town, they spend money, they support small business and whatnot.”

The market was bustling with people getting photos in front of the first Starbucks that opened there in 1971, while others were capturing video of the famous fish-tossing ritual that Pike Place is known for.

Fleming said this tourism season seemed “fairly normal,” although he’s noticed a drop in Korean and Chinese tourists, and he believes the political fallout might manifest more starkly next year.

“Pike Place Market, as far as looking at that kind of stuff, is maybe isolated from the statistical norms,” he said. “I would suspect Washington state, I would expect Seattle’s getting way less Canadian travellers but using the baseball game and the jerseys and whatnot as my barometer, there seemed to be a lot of people out.”

However, Visit Seattle, the city’s tourism marketing organization, is forecasting a 26 per cent drop in international visitors this year, calling it the largest drop for a major city in the U.S. due to its dependence on Canada.

The numbers were crunched by the international advisory firm Oxford Economics earlier this year.