Tourism-related businesses on the Sunshine Coast are struggling to survive the financial fallout from the COVID-19 shutdown.
Yvonne Koehler of Happy Holidays Motorhomes in Gibsons says 90 percent of their customers come from abroad and the cancellation of flights and closure of the Canada-US border is devastating.
She says people who have booked are asking for refunds.
Meanwhile, they have monthly expenses such as storage for their recreational vehicles and ongoing financing costs, as well as the cost of new units they had entered into purchase agreements to obtain and are unable to cancel.
Koehler says they’ve investigated the government assistance programs but discovered they are not eligible.
She says that every year they usually have from two-hundred to three-hundred people and families rent RVs from them.
Koehler says some of them spend the summer touring British Columbia and travel all the way down to Mexico.
