Scenic and sightseeing transportation, water

Harbour tours, dinner cruises, whale watching and charter fishing. Of the three sightseeing codes this is the most reachable and the largest — 199 Canadian establishments, 73 of them in British Columbia and 18 in Nova Scotia, with a broad middle of 10-to-49-employee operators rather than a few giants. The pre-screen called it asset-backed and licence-bound, and that holds. The cut offered here is softer than most on this research and should be read that way. A passenger vessel is a certified, crewed, insured asset that earns for one season and costs for twelve, and the berth it sails from is usually a concession let by a port, a park or a municipality that can re-tender it. The biggest operator in the field shows how little scale cures this. Hornblower Group — more than 30 million guests a year, holder of landmark concessions — filed for Chapter 11 in February 2024, handing majority ownership to a credit fund in exchange for cutting approximately $720M of debt, with $300M of debtor-in-possession financing to get through it [A]. The company blamed its overnight river-cruise arm, which it shut, so this is not a clean verdict on day boats. But it does show that prime berths and scale did not carry the capital structure. For the 75 one-to-four-employee operators the business is an owner's livelihood on a paid-off hull. This record does not find a decisive kill. A full study should test one vessel on a leased berth in a whale-watching or cruise-call port: days sailed, load factor, and what the berth owner takes.