It’s springtime in Metro Vancouver, when thickets of selfie sticks and tourists sprout up beneath canopies of the region’s famous cherry blossoms.
She recalls the sight of tourists getting out of a tour bus at Queen Elizabeth Park, one of Vancouver’s most popular locations for blossom viewing. He said guides pick up travellers from China and the U.S. at the airport and drive them around the city’s best cherry blossom locations. Poole said that in the 1930s, the mayors of the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Kobe gave 500 cherry trees to the Vancouver Park Board to honour Japanese Canadians who served in the First World War.Charlene Liu, president and CEO of Panasia Holidays, a Calgary-based tourism company, said cherry blossom viewing is extremely popular among Chinese-speaking domestic tourists, many of them from Edmonton and Calgary.
“It’s my family’s annual tradition to walk around to see the cherry blossom trees and we have been keeping doing this for 11 years straight. We never get tired of it,” said Yu in Mandarin.Jordan Liu, B.C.-based director of the tour guide training program with the Canadian Inbound Tourism Association of Asia Pacific, said there were more than 2,700 cherry blossom locations across Metro Vancouver, and the choice could be overwhelming.