Travel Purposes and Preferences of Albertan Tourists Visiting British Columbia Keywords: British Columbia, Travel Purposes, Travel Preferences, Albertan Tourists, Trip Spending, Travel Activities In British Columbia tourism is one of the largest economic contributor injecting 7.9 billion dollars into BC’s economy (Destination BC, 2018). Looking across Canada to see which province travels the most to British Columbia it’s clear that Alberta outnumbers others with 65% of travelers coming from Alberta to BC with the exclusion of BC itself (Statistics Canada, 2017). This research examines the activities engaged in, purposes for travel to major metropolitan areas, and trip spending details. The top three activities that Albertan tourists engaged in were to go to beaches, visiting friends and relatives, and visiting a national/provincial or nature park. Conversely, the least engaged in activities were going snowmobiling, going ATVing, and attending an aboriginal event as well as going hunting. Examination showed that Albertans tend to travel for leisure more than to visit friends and relatives or business. When analyzing major metropolitan areas, Vancouver and Victoria saw a fairly healthy distribution of people traveling for either business, leisure travel or to visit friends and relatives. Abbotsford saw the majority of travelers arrive in order to visiting friends and relatives. All other areas outside of metropolitan areas saw the greatest distribution of travelers visiting for leisure. Trip spending was higher with individuals traveling for leisure rather than to visit friends and relatives. 50% of Albertans spent at least $550 on their trip and 20% spent at least $1070. References Destination B.C. (2018). Value of Tourism 2016. Retrieved March 21, 2018, from https://www.destinationbc.ca/getattachment/Research/Industry-Performance/Value-of- Tourism/Value-of-Tourism-in-British-Columbia-A-Snapsho-(2)/Value-of-Tourism-2016- Snapshot_FINAL.pdf.aspx Statistics Canada (2017). Travel Survey of Residents of Canada. Retrieved from http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3Instr.pl?Function=assembleInstr