Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Viad Corp third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and if you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Carrie Long, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Viad's 2021 third quarter earnings conference call. During the call, you will hear from Steve Moster, our President and CEO, and President of GES, David Barry, our President of Pursuit, and Ellen Ingersoll, our Chief Financial Officer. Certain statements made during the call which are not historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements. Information concerning business and other risk factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements can be found in our annual, quarterly and other current reports filed with the SEC. During the call, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP measures, including income or loss before other items and adjusted segment EBITDA.
Important disclosures regarding these measures, including reconciliations to net income or loss attributable to Viad, can be found in table two of our earnings press release, which is available on our website at viad.com. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve.
Thanks, Carrie, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. During the call, we'll discuss our business performance during the 2021 third quarter, provide some insight into the recovery of our industries, and review our financial position. David will provide business updates for Pursuit shortly, and after that I'll share some business updates for GES, and Ellen will cover our financial results towards the end of the call. Before I turn it over to David, I'd like to thank our entire team for their fantastic job meeting the needs of our clients and guests with great service and operational execution during a challenging quarter of accelerated business activity at both Pursuit and GES. I'm pleased with our performance during the quarter and optimistic about the future of our businesses and industries.
We're well positioned for recovery with pent-up demand for iconic and unforgettable leisure experiences and in-person live events. I'd like to now turn the call over to David to discuss what's happening across Pursuit. David?
Thanks, Steve. Thank you all for joining us. Today, I am very pleased to announce strong 2021 third quarter results at Pursuit. Before going into the details on our performance in the quarter, let me just take a minute to thank our seasonal and year-round team members and leaders across the Pursuit world. Our teams worked tirelessly this summer to deliver on our mission and brand promise of connecting guests and staff to iconic places through unforgettable and inspiring experiences. At Pursuit, it's in our DNA to focus on every step in the hospitality profit chain, and we know that when we maintain a strong focus on team member satisfaction, great guest experiences, and the creation of memories, it drives revenue and profit growth.
That growth dynamic has never been more evident than today, and I'm very pleased to announce that in the third quarter, Pursuit delivered revenue of $118 million, adjusted EBITDA of $60 million, and adjusted EBITDA margins of 51%. Ellen will go into more detail shortly, but for the quarter, Pursuit adjusted EBITDA increased $39.9 million or 202% from the same period in 2020, and reached new records in our Alaska and Montana geographies. In Jasper, our seven hotels each eclipsed their pre-pandemic third quarter 2019 results. Last quarter, we signaled that the recovery is well underway, and today our financial results affirm our view that the world is healing. The demand for bucket list leisure and hospitality experience is returning stronger than ever. Now let me share some details regarding our performance in the quarter.
Starting first in Alaska, we delivered record third quarter EBITDA as guest demand was undeterred by COVID driven disruptions to the cruise industry, and our reservations teams worked super hard to handle record-breaking call volumes all season long. In Seward, our Kenai Fjords Tours business saw revenue grow 14% from 2019 on a 9% increase in passengers and a 5% increase in effective ticket price as guests in search of glaciers and humpback whales rebounded significantly from 2020. In Denali, our Denali Backcountry Adventure tour also welcomed a record number of passengers, and we leveraged additional capacity to achieve revenue results that were 30% ahead of 2019. Across our five Alaskan hotels, we saw strong demand from the lower 48 and maintained outstanding guest feedback scores despite a very challenging labor market.
Average daily rates were up 6% from 2019 and 32% from 2020. In Montana, we delivered another record season with Q3 revenue and EBITDA outpacing the previous high water mark achieved in 2019. We successfully reopened Glacier Park Lodge in St. Mary Village following their COVID driven closure in 2020, and visitation to the east side of Glacier National Park rebounded strongly in 2021. Net Promoter scores at our West Glacier RV Park & Cabins achieved an impressive 77.2, and hotel RevPAR increased versus 2019 at seven of nine Glacier Park properties on a same store basis, and average daily rates increased 8% from 2019.
Retail results in Glacier continue to be absolutely remarkable as third quarter revenue was up $12.4 million, with 76% ahead of 2020 and 34% ahead of a previous record we set in 2019. Moving north to Alberta, the Canadian border opened to Americans on August 9, and to all international visitors on September 7. Almost immediately thereafter, we saw an acceleration of visitation to our attractions and hotel properties in Banff, Jasper, and the iconic Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton. While the border opening was later than we had hoped, we're proud of what we achieved throughout the quarter. In Banff, we saw a strong Net Promoter score improvement from 2019 at our Lake Minnewanka Cruise, the Glacier Adventure, and Glacier Skywalk attractions, while our sightseeing business emerged from hibernation to solid demand from international and Canadian guests.
We've continued our upward trajectory in F&B offerings and now operate three of the top seven restaurants in the town of Banff, according to Tripadvisor, Sky Bistro and Northern Lights Alpine Kitchen at our Banff Gondola, and Farm & Fire, located in our Elk + Avenue Hotel. In Jasper, a relentless focus on guest experience helped drive significant improvements in hotel Net Promoter scores, enabling us to increase average daily rates 22% above the 2019 levels, leading to record third quarter EBITDA. We also operate two of Tripadvisor's top six restaurants in Jasper, with The Pines Restaurant located at our Pyramid Lake Lodge, and the Maligne Canyon Wilderness Kitchen located just outside of the Jasper town center. Switching gears now over to Pursuit's FlyOver attractions, we continue to see very strong signs of recovery in each of the markets in which we operate.
In Vancouver, FlyOver Canada reopened on June 18 and immediately saw strong demand that exceeded our expectations and continued throughout the third quarter. The attraction was sold out for the majority of August, resulting in a 143% year-over-year increase in ride passengers. Our revenue management efforts drove a 26% year-over-year increase to effective ticket prices, and ancillary revenue per passenger nearly tripled from 2019. In Reykjavík, FlyOver Iceland benefited from the beginning of the tourism recovery in Iceland as international guest arrivals into the Keflavík Airport rebounded to approximately 60% of 2019 Q3 levels. We've seen steady increases in capture rate of international visitors to Iceland, and we're excited to premiere FlyOver The Real Wild West in Iceland actually starting today, and that promises to be popular with international and local guests alike.
Let's change gears quickly and talk about the three new attractions we opened in 2021. Pursuit's newest FlyOver attraction, FlyOver Las Vegas, opened successfully on September 1 and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with an average rating of 4.5 stars across the review platforms. In Vegas, we're again seeing the power of diversified attraction content, as 45% of our guests to date have purchased a dual-feature ticket, combining the FlyOver The Real Wild West experience with FlyOver Iceland. This results in increased guest dwell time at the attraction and drives incremental retail and food and beverage revenue. In British Columbia, we're thrilled with the inaugural season at the Golden Skybridge, our newest attraction in Western Canada. The Skybridge opened to the public in early June and quickly rose to the number two position in the sights and landmarks category in Golden, BC.
80% of Golden locals have purchased a season pass. That shows really strong demand and a high level of interest from our local community. During the quarter, we opened the Golden Skybridge itself, along with the Canyon Edge Challenge Course and an exciting quadruple zip line, with more experiences to follow in 2022. In Reykjavík, we just celebrated the six-month operating anniversary of the remarkable Sky Lagoon, our new geothermal lagoon attraction inspired by nature in the Icelandic spa culture and located just minutes from the center of Reykjavík. The guest response has been outstanding, with 4.7 stars out of five on Google, and we're pleased to have seen an increasing number of international guests throughout the quarter as Iceland has opened its borders and international visitation has increased. In conclusion, this was certainly a season unlike any other.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, staffing shortages throughout our operating geographies, and unprecedented guest demand in our U.S. locations put our teams to the test, and without question, I can tell you they rose to the occasion. We're exceptionally proud of what we've accomplished in a very challenging year with record results in several geographies, strong guest feedback scores, and the opening of three new world-class high-margin attractions with Sky Lagoon, Golden Skybridge, and FlyOver Las Vegas. Our success is a testament to our strong execution focus on Pursuit's Refresh, Build, Buy strategy and the power of iconic, unforgettable, and inspiring experiences. None of these things can happen, though, without the significant efforts of our team members around the world who work so hard through a season that I'm sure most of us will never forget.
Before turning it back to Steve, let me just share a view into the future as we have some things we're pretty excited about. First, in the Canadian Rockies, construction is well underway on the new 88-room hotel in Jasper, which we expect to open to the public in early summer 2022. Next, we anticipate beginning construction in the first quarter of 2022 on our fourth FlyOver attraction, FlyOver Canada in Toronto, located at an ideal development site and tourism destination at the base of the CN Tower and adjacent to the Rogers Centre. While I can't provide specific details, I'm pleased to share that we have a robust pipeline of organic growth opportunities from within Pursuit, in addition to visibility to some very compelling buy opportunities that we're actively exploring.
We're also very pleased to announce the opening of Nightrise at the summit of the Banff Gondola. Those of you that haven't seen the release, Nightrise is an immersive experience of light, sound, and wonder, and is a multi-sensory winter addition to the guest experience at the summit of the Banff Gondola. Opening December 2 and running until March 12, this is a really unique winter activity, and it merges multimedia, storytelling, and nature for a new and inspiring perspective at such an iconic Banff location. Nightrise has been created and developed with Moment Factory, Parks Canada, and the Stoney Nakoda Nation, and is a great example of using our refresh, build-buy strategy to drive guest experience and compelling reasons to return and visit our attractions. We're optimistic that pent-up demand for worldwide travel remains strong.
We continue to see strong demand for our U.S. locations and a significant recovery in our businesses in Banff, Jasper, Vancouver, and Iceland as borders remain open and guests are free to move about the world. Thank you again to our teams around the world. Now, Steve, back to you.
Thanks, David. Now, switching over to GES. The third quarter was a turning point for GES, with revenue improving from accelerated event activity to $116 million, more than four times the revenue in the second quarter and about half of the revenue in the 2019 pre-pandemic third quarter. The recovery is underway, and I'm pleased to report that in September, GES had its first month of positive EBITDA since the pandemic took hold of the industry last year. We successfully produced over 250 events during the quarter in geographies around the world, including MINExpo in Las Vegas, the Association of the United States Army event in Washington, D.C., the National Safety Council in Orlando, Gastech in Dubai, and the Defence and Security Equipment International event in London.
These events were backloaded into the quarter, with 60% of our quarterly revenue coming in September alone. I'm incredibly proud of how our team performed during the quarter and their dedication to creating safe, extraordinary experiences for our clients and customers. We entered the second half of 2021 with a busy schedule filled with events that had postponed from the first half of the year and 2020. Although we benefited from the increased event activity, the Delta variant had a larger impact on the quarter than we had previously anticipated. As we started the quarter, the net square footage being sold to exhibitors, which generally correlates to our revenue, was tracking lower than pre-pandemic levels by about 30%.
However, as the Delta variant became more dominant, some exhibitors started pulling out of events, and we saw a small uptick in the number of canceled events during the quarter. For the events that took place, the overall average revenue decline was about 50% compared to pre-pandemic occurrences. Some events were near or above pre-pandemic levels, while others remained significantly below. While the event industry is still dealing with the uncertainty from the Delta variant, we're encouraged by the strength in the recovery in certain locations, industries, and clients. Events in the U.K., Europe, and the Middle East are benefiting from a higher vaccination rate and experiencing stronger than expected net square footage and attendance levels. In North America, we're seeing strength in events for aerospace, industrials, and defense. I'm also encouraged by the level of spending by large corporate clients at trade shows.
In the third quarter, we saw key clients spending about 138% of pre-pandemic budgets, and I believe this level of corporate spending is a strong bellwether for the recovery of live events. Within our exhibition and conference service line, the third quarter provided us another opportunity to prove out our new low-cost model, and I'm pleased with the results. As discussed on previous calls, we were able to make transformational changes to significantly improve our cost structure, including variabilizing more of our costs and reducing fixed costs through network rationalization. During the quarter, our team closely managed our variable costs as we quickly ramped up with event activity. Our freelance labor model allows us the flexibility to scale up and down based on the variable show schedule and avoid adding unnecessary overhead. This was particularly important during the spike of activity we experienced in September.
Additionally, the non-core services like carpet cleaning and storage that we outsource performed well, and I'm very happy with our decision. In the third quarter, we also had an opportunity to test our reduced network footprint, and I'm happy to report that we were able to produce several California shows by extending the operational reach of our Nevada facilities in Las Vegas and Reno. Overall, we're well-positioned for improved profitability as the live event industry continues to recover. Switching over to our brand experience service line, we made significant progress against our strategic goal to grow and expand our work with leading corporate clients. Experiential marketing is a large, fast-growing segment of the corporate marketer's budget. We have a significant opportunity to grow in this fragmented market at attractive margins and are positioning GES for ongoing success in this area.
Last quarter, we announced that we hired an experienced industry leader, Jeff Stelmach, to lead our brand experiences team. Jeff has created and led several of the industry's most successful experiential agencies. Jeff is working with our experienced and proven team to combine our event, exhibit, and AV capabilities into a single integrated client offering while adding capabilities that will open new revenue streams within the marketing and experiential business industry. In addition, through revised positioning and marketing of these services within the industry and the addition of new talent, Jeff will not only expand the service offering available to our robust list of existing clients, but also open our sales focus to a host of new industry segments and clients. A key part of this strategy includes the expansion of our creative and strategic resource offerings.
We have initiated the expansion of our creative and strategic capabilities by starting at the top with the addition of John Trinanes as Chief Creative Officer. John is an idea-driven creative leader with deep experience in defining overarching strategic direction and creative vision. He has extensive experience working with clients, building and inspiring multi-disciplined creative teams to bring big ideas to life across multiple channels. John will lead a global team of creative thought leaders as he develops a new expanded host of creative and strategic services to enhance offerings to existing and future clients. GES does an incredible job delivering a broad range of unique and impactful experiences for our clients, including corporate meeting and events, digital experiences, brand and sports activation, product launches, strategic exhibition program management, corporate customer centers, and consumer pop-up events.
During the quarter, we had the opportunity to guide our clients through many new engaging experiences. Our U.S. team completed an impressive program for Caterpillar at MINExpo that required moving machinery the size of a two-story house and over 3,000 hours to install and dismantle. Also in the U.S., we partnered with Procore to create a fantastic hybrid event and filmed all the content with keynote speakers on a stage that we designed and fabricated. In Dubai, we designed and executed the World Green Economy Summit, an impactful large-scale hybrid event that brought together world leaders as well as thousands of visitors and online guests to pledge a sustainable future for the Middle East. Additionally, in Dubai, our teams designed and constructed the Cisco Experience Center, a six-month-long semi-permanent activation with fully immersive content and interactive technology zone.
Money20/20, a financial technology show that occurs each year in Amsterdam and Las Vegas, is a terrific example of the power of one GES team. The EMEA and US teams came together to collaborate and create two memorable events for our clients that each drew a greater number of exhibitors than the prior occurrence. As a testament to the incredible client service and quality of work provided by our talented teams, we have many new business wins and renewals to celebrate. Our exhibition and conference team won new business from the Global Business Travel Association, including event accommodations and AV services, and the Midwest Podiatry Conference, as well as renewed business with the Process Expo and Texas Restaurant Association.
Our brand experience team won new business from Sanofi, one of the top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, as well as renewed business with Northwestern Mutual and National Society for Cutaneous Medicine. I'm really proud of what our teams have accomplished. It's encouraging to see that large-scale events have returned as local restrictions loosen and people are becoming more willing to gather and travel again. The value created from face to face live events is irreplaceable, as it is a powerful way to generate sales, drive brand awareness and loyalty, and interact with attendees. We see a bright future ahead as we plan to resume the normal cadence of events scheduled in 2022. I'm thrilled about the heightened live event activity, the transformational changes that we made to our cost structure, and the exciting new growth opportunities ahead for GES.
We are re-emerging stronger and once again creating the world's most meaningful and memorable experiences for marketers, organizers, and event attendees. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Ellen to discuss our financial results in more detail. Ellen?
Thanks, Steve. During the third quarter, we experienced an acceleration of business activity at both Pursuit and GES, with revenue increasing to nearly four times the level generated in the second quarter and reaching 66% of the amount we realized in the pre-pandemic 2019 third quarter. Pursuit had three new world-class attractions online during its peak summer tourism season, and GES had a strong event schedule, including the previously rescheduled MINExpo. At GES, we realized revenue of $116 million, which improved nearly 370% from the second quarter and reached 53% of the amount generated in the pre-pandemic 2019 third quarter due to increased face-to-face live event activity and the return of large-scale events that were canceled or postponed for most of 2020 and into the first half of 2021.
GES adjusted segment EBITDA was negative $4.2 million, which improved by approximately $7.4 million as compared to the prior year, driven by the increase in revenue and the cost structure improvements that we have implemented. As a reminder, the 2023 third quarter adjusted segment EBITDA included a gain of about $13.5 million from the sale of our San Diego facility. When adjusted to exclude this gain from the prior year quarter, our year-over-year improvement in EBITDA at GES was $21 million. That's a flow-through of just over 20% on GES' incremental revenue. At Pursuit, we experienced a year-over-year revenue increase of approximately $68.7 million and reached about 87% of the revenue amount generated in the pre-pandemic 2019 third quarter.
Pursuit's third quarter revenue was $117.6 million, and adjusted segment EBITDA was $59.6 million. As David mentioned earlier, Pursuit's adjusted segment EBITDA improved by $39.9 million year over year. This was largely the result of exceptionally strong visitation from domestic travelers during peak season, with our Glacier Park properties posting record performance. Our Banff and Jasper experiences were challenged by the Canadian border closure, but had an uptick in demand during the quarter after restrictions were lifted to fully vaccinated Americans in early August, and to other fully vaccinated international travelers in early September. Additionally, the three new high-margin attractions that we opened this year, the Sky Lagoon, Golden Skybridge, and FlyOver Las Vegas, collectively contributed an incremental $7.4 million of revenue during the quarter.
I'm pleased to announce that net income and free cash flow turned positive this quarter. I'm encouraged by the demand improvements we're seeing in our industries once local restrictions loosened and people resumed traveling and gathering. Our net income attributable to Viad was $15.1 million for the quarter, and our income before other items was $18.4 million, which excludes restructuring charges, attraction startup costs, acquisition, integration, and transaction-related costs, and other non-recurring expenses as applicable. Our cash flow from operations was an inflow of approximately $37 million for the quarter. Our operating cash inflow was lower than our prior guidance, primarily due to the unanticipated impact of the Delta variant. Our team did an excellent job closely managing our costs and maximizing our cash generation wherever possible.
Our capital expenditures totaled about $20 million and were more than offset by our positive operating cash flow. Our investments were mainly at Pursuit and included growth CapEx of approximately $8 million for the FlyOver Las Vegas attraction, which opened as planned on September 1. During the quarter, we paid cash dividends of approximately $2 million on our convertible preferred equity, which were previously paid in kind. Our new credit facility offers more flexible terms and allows us to pay our convertible preferred stock dividends in cash, thereby preventing any additional common share dilution. We ended the third quarter with approximately $111 million in cash and cash equivalents, and we had approximately $78 million of capacity available on our revolving credit facility.
On September 30, 2021, our debt totaled approximately $470 million, and this included our $400 million Term Loan B, our financing lease obligations of approximately $64 million, and approximately $6 million in debt at FlyOver Iceland. We are in an excellent position to continue our growth journey with our strong liquidity, financial flexibility, and improving industry demand. We have a solid platform that can scale with us as we execute against our exciting refresh, build, buy growth strategy at Pursuit, including the new 88-room hotel in Jasper and FlyOver Canada, Toronto. We are actively evaluating other high-margin growth opportunities, including acquisitions in iconic locations and new FlyOver locations. Before I turn it back over to Steve for concluding remarks, I'd like to briefly comment on our financial outlook.
With in-person activity improving, we expect that GES' revenue will continue to improve. Based on our current level of bookings and pipeline, we currently expect GES to generate positive EBITDA during the fourth quarter, and we expect that to be partially offset by negative EBITDA from Pursuit during this traditionally slow tourism season. We currently expect a free cash outflow during the fourth quarter in the range of $35 million-$40 million, and this assumes an operating cash outflow somewhere in the range of $20 million and capital expenditures of approximately $15 million. This includes growth CapEx for our new 88-room hotel in Jasper. We will also make our first quarterly Term Loan B principal payment of $1 million, and expect to pay approximately $2 million in cash dividends on our convertible preferred equity.
These expectations are subject to the impact of COVID, including the Delta variant. We will continue to carefully manage our cash flows and be strong stewards of our capital to maximize shareholder value. As we look forward to the next few years, we believe that Pursuit same store revenue will recover faster than GES' due to expectations that leisure travel will return more quickly than business travel. Pursuit will also benefit from incremental revenue from new experiences, both those that did not exist and those that did not have a full-year in 2019. GES has a strong backlog of contracted events and an expanded roster of corporate clients. It is evident that there is pent-up demand for both industries. We are excited about the recovery and growth ahead. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Steve for some concluding remarks.
Thanks, Ellen. Our recovery is underway with the acceleration of leisure travel at Pursuit and live event activity at GES. We are re-emerging from the pandemic in a position of strength with pent-up demand for our experiences on both sides of the business and a transformed, more profitable GES. We remain focused on our strategy to create extraordinary experiences and strong return for our shareholders. For Pursuit, we will continue to significantly scale the business and drive growth through our proven refresh, build, buy strategy, as well as take advantage of economic disruption and opportunities in the space. For GES, we will build on the progress that we've made to date to improve the margin profile and resume generating strong cash flow through our more flexible cost structure and focus on higher margin clients and services. We have a clear path to accelerated growth and significantly enhanced shareholder return.
Our liquidity position is strong, and we have the financial flexibility to sustain and continue investing in our future.
We have high quality businesses with leading market positions in experiential leisure travel and experiential B2B events. We plan to capitalize on the pandemic disruption to strengthen our leading market positions. Our growth strategy has been proven to be successful, driving strong returns pre-pandemic, and there are tremendous opportunities to continue investing for long-term growth. I'm excited about the great future that lies ahead for our company. Thanks again to our hardworking and dedicated employees who make all of this possible, and thank you to our shareholders for their continued support in Viad. With that, we'll open up the call for questions.
Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one to ask a question. We have your first question from Tyler Batory with Janney. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Couple of questions from me. Maybe I'll start on the GES side of things. Appreciate all the commentary there. Steve Moster, I'm interested to dive in a little bit more, if we could, about the future outlook there specifically, you know, in the fourth quarter, how that's looking versus the third quarter. I know you did say you expect positive EBITDA on that business in the fourth quarter. What's your expectation in terms of the revenue side of things? I know the third quarter benefited quite a bit from MINExpo in September, but would you expect fourth quarter revenue to accelerate over the third quarter? Any other commentary you can provide just generally in terms of, you know, the shows that are happening.
You know, I know you went through some statistics on net square footage and whatnot, but just interested in more of your perspective on, you know, guest feedback and what you're hearing from folks in the field as they're attending some of these shows in the kind of post-COVID or new normal world, if you will.
Yeah. Thanks, Tyler, and that's a good question. The third quarter, you know, so much of the event activity really happened in September. That's when we saw meaningful event activity for the quarter. You already noted that MINExpo occurred in September. As we look forward and I also in my comments, I mentioned that, you know, it was about 50% of the revenue in the quarter versus pre-pandemic levels. You know, as we look forward, I do see the revenue accelerating into the fourth quarter. Despite not having a large show like MINExpo, we have a higher volume of events taking place. You know, there's accelerating revenue across a larger base of events that are taking place.
I do anticipate over time seeing that pre-pandemic level of revenue returning, but only over time. I think there's still a little bit of uncertainty out in the market. We're encouraged by what we've seen so far, but I do see the revenue accelerating into the fourth quarter and certainly into 2022. It wasn't part of your question, but you know, when I look ahead and into next year, I'm pleased to say that you know, I'm hearing really good things from our show organizers and from our corporate clients about participating events in the next year. To this point, you know, I really haven't seen any significant cancellations of any large scale events going into next year. I'm pleased with the quarter.
I'm anxious about getting into the fourth quarter and getting into 2022.
Okay, great. That's very helpful color. This is probably a question for both the GES side of things and Pursuit as well. You know, the labor situation, supply chain cost inflation, you know, those are really key topics of conversation right now. I'm just interested what you're seeing and, you know, how you're handling those issues in each of the business segments.
Hey, David, why don't you talk about the Pursuit side?
All right, I will. Thanks, Tyler. It's a good question. I think there's a couple of things that are important. One is Canada is relaunching its foreign worker program, so for those that are unfamiliar with that, it's generally young people that are taking a gap year from university and traveling to another Commonwealth country, and that's why you'll hear so many Australian and Kiwi accents in Banff and Jasper. One, the Canadian government has already begun reopening that program, and obviously you've got to be fully vaccinated and able to travel from countries that permit travel. We're beginning to see that re-accelerate. We're encouraged by the presence of our J-1 visa workers. You know, typically in a year, we would hire 500 to 600 international workers that come for a defined period of time. Those programs are restarting.
Culture matters, though. I think culture really matters. If you have a strong team member engagement and hospitality culture within your company, then you're gonna win in the recruitment battle. We have struggled in places and rallied hard, and I think our recruitment efforts we've begun earlier were ahead of where we've been in any other particular year, and I'm confident we're gonna have the staffing and team members in place to have a very successful summer 2022.
Yeah. Tyler, from a GES perspective, I'll tackle labor and also supply chain. You know, certainly as the industry has recovered, it's been important for us to fill key roles across the business, and I feel like the team's done an excellent job filling those roles. Again, from a lot of the show execution, we rely on our union partners for support at the shows. We have not seen any shortage in labor available to us to execute the events that we've had. From a supply chain perspective, you know, one of the issues we had earlier on was around transportation. You've heard about it across a number of different industries.
We were fortunate in that, you know, in the last quarter, we really resolved a lot of those issues and we resolved them going forward as well. We've made some key partnerships that allow us to have access to transport both here in the U.S. and North America and also in the U.K. You know, knock on wood, under the current circumstances, we're in a really good position as we go into the fourth quarter.
Okay, great. Maybe one last one for me, and then I'll pass it on. In the Pursuit, I'm interested specifically Banff, Jasper for the quarter. You know, the mix of business, locals versus destination. I'm interested how that compared to normal. Really just trying to get at, you know, how significant the border reopening was, in terms of, you know, how many guests were coming, not only from the U.S. in August, but also, you know, internationally when the rules changed, in September.
It was interesting, right? When we put plans together, we envisioned that the borders were open and would be opening in March. How wrong we were. Fast-forward to the seventh or ninth of August, whichever the day was, and as borders opened. A couple of things happened right away. Typically in a year, any historical year, if you go back to 2019, Pursuit would be 50% international visitation into those markets, obviously, heavily focused on U.S. visitation and coming from North America. We had a lot of Canadians who the summer before had been trapped in their home province and unable to travel. Canadians traveled vigorously and with enthusiasm across the country.
Second is a large influx of vaccinated U.S. travelers who've been itching to get to the Rockies and see things. That accelerated, you know, immediately. I think it reflected in a couple of different places, like significant and very strong growth in average daily rate in our lodging businesses in Banff and Jasper in our attraction visits. You know, it accelerated. Was it as early as we hoped it would be? No. Generally, what we've seen is this trend has continued through the fall. We had a very strong October, and then we're looking forward also to a, you know, a reasonable finish through the end of the fourth quarter. Excited to see the borders reopening and people moving around.
Okay, great. That's all for me. Appreciate the detail.
Thanks, Tyler.
We have your next question from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Your line's open.
Thanks. Steve, I was hoping maybe you can give a little color on the amount of revenue you think you lost because of what happened with the Delta variant in the third quarter. I think you said it's little, but if you could give some perspective, that'd be awesome.
Well, again, when you know we started into the third quarter, there were a couple of things that we were seeing within the events. We had seen that the square footage on a trade show floor was about 70% of what it was pre-pandemic. You know, as we went through the quarter and the Delta variant became more dominant, that fell down to about 50% of prior period in terms of its revenue and square footage. You know, there's a lag there or lost opportunity there from the shows shrinking in size. The second part was we did have some cancellations that took place in the third quarter that we weren't expecting.
Yeah, it's hard to give it a specific number, but I think you can triangulate from where we were, or, you know, some of the thoughts going into the quarter, and where we came out, and you can triangulate to get to a number. We really, you know, we see that the cancellations have really slowed down as we go into the fourth quarter and certainly into 2022, where I haven't seen any so far. In terms of square footage, you know, we're seeing solid activity. We think it'll be in the neighborhood of what we had in the third quarter, specifically in September, and we're encouraged by that. Hopefully that helps, Kartik.
It does. I wanted to ask just on Pursuit. I know one of the things you mentioned was a very strong domestic travel out of Canadian visitors. You know, as we go into 2022, you know, does that cause a difficult comparison for you, or are you anticipating that international travelers will be back and you can get to kind of that 50/50 ratio that you've had in the past?
Yeah, it's a good question. I think what's interesting, Kartik, is that definitely there is significant demand as countries and borders open. Remember, like, a little bit like the retail business, our seasons, we're working several seasons in advance. If you look at international demand for countries that know that they can travel, you know, we're showing very strong demand coming into the 2022 season. I'll give you two small examples. In Glacier, November 2020, we were sitting pre-sold on the books about $4.9 million. November 2021, we're sitting at $7.3 million. In Jasper, November 2020, we were about $3.5 million. We're sitting now this November 2021 at $5.4 million. The mix of guests will change.
The international visitation numbers will increase, and that'll come from both the U.S. and countries that are closer. Some countries that are still evolving and coming out of situations, so India being one where there's been strong acceleration of vaccines, but it may take one more year for folks to be traveling. We anticipate that demand for September 2022 is going to be significant, and we're doing everything we can to get ready.
Right. Just one last question, and I apologize, but would you be able to repeat your expectations for kind of the cash flow assumptions you've laid out for fourth quarter? I apologize, I just missed it.
Yeah, no worries. Free cash flow, we guided to an outflow of $35 million-$40 million, and that was about $20 million operating cash, $15 million CapEx. We have our term loan B payment of $1 million and our dividends of $2 million.
Thank you.
That $20 million was an operating cash outflow.
Right. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Yeah.
Thanks, Kartik.
We have your next question from Bryan Maher with B. Riley Securities. Your line's open.
Good afternoon, and thanks for all that information. It's been quite helpful. I think we touched upon this maybe on the last earnings conference call regarding the potential to extend the season up in Canada a bit to kind of satiate, you know, strong vacation, you know, leisure demand. Has that been the case, and how long did you extend it or are you extending it if that's in process?
We had a really strong October. Typically, the summer season tapers towards the tenth of October. What we were pleased with is we had, you know, visitation demand, attraction demand, lodging demand all the way through the month of October. Very strong performance. Not in a position yet that I'm gonna give you any numbers specifically to the month of October, but I can tell you well ahead of our expectations. In some cases, as we look in specifically performance in Jasper, you know, that entire lodging business is gonna be significantly ahead of its original plan for the year, which is exciting, and a lot of that coming through this time period. Some properties, Bryan, you know, were limited because they're not winterized and other things, and climate forces you to close them.
Definitely, you know, strong attendance and lodging occupancies through the fall.
Thanks. You talked a little bit about labor and, you know, the flexing of, you know, being variable with labor versus historical plans and the fact that labor unions, I think you said no shortage of labor union ability to get workers. How much of the business relies on labor unions? In the non-labor union areas, are you having any problems with other sourcing of labor, or is it just for some reason for you guys not an issue?
You know, Brian, it's a good question. Let me see if I can help clarify some of my earlier comments. A large portion of our the work that we do at the event itself in terms of the installation of the event is done through our union partners, and we have not seen any shortage in terms of union labor for our events. I feel really good about that in terms of the availability and supply of union labor. The part that we have flexed are some key roles within the organization where you know we know it's going to be you know a bumpy road in recovery that some events will happen, other ones will not.
We've chosen to go down the path where we have employees that work on a flexible or kind of a freelance model. We'll hire them for the course of the event, but then they come off of our books when the event has passed. That's been critical as we've seen kind of these spikes and valleys of events happening and not happening. I'm pleased with how we've approached it. In terms of hiring full-time candidates, you know, like everybody else, it takes a little bit longer to find the right people and a little bit longer to train them and onboard them. To this point, I think the team's done a really good job of finding the right candidates to bring onto the business at the right time as this recovery is taking place.
You know, recruiting and training, those continue to be challenges like you see across every industry. I think the way the team's handled it has been pretty remarkable.
Okay. Kind of extending that a little bit into a margin discussion. You know, clearly you guys have, you know, models for the company similar to myself and other sell-side analysts. Would you say that the recovery margins are kind of progressing as you would have expected? You know, if not, you know, kind of plus or minus to what magnitude? Is it a couple of percentage points? Is it 5-10 percentage points? What's the magnitude of miss versus what you thought maybe a quarter ago?
Again, our longer term on the GES side of the business, longer term target is, you know, to be greater than 8% EBITDA margin and have flow through on incremental revenue of about 20%. What I can say today is that, you know, I'm pleased with the decisions we made in terms of our cost structure. I've seen the changes that we put in place have a positive impact on our overall profitability. I'm also happy with the way revenue is scaling back. Obviously, I'd like to see it come back quicker and the events get back to their pre-pandemic size quicker. I am pleased with how the business has performed and, you know, I think we're still on track in terms of our target as revenue recovers to pre-pandemic levels to hit those targets.
Okay. One last-
Bryan, go ahead.
No, I was gonna shift gears, so go ahead on that one.
I was just gonna say I'll pile on to the margin question. You know, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, our Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin 51%, in line with our expectations. Our mix of guests, as international travelers return, those numbers go even higher. Generally, people that are on a longer vacation, you know, they'll, their spending patterns are slightly elevated from, you know, more of a national visitor or you know, a regional Canadian traveling from one place to another. With us, it really moves with mix of guests, we're really happy with how quickly things have returned.
You can also sense some energy and I would describe it as celebration of folks that are traveling again and, you know, they've had a chance to save some money over the pandemic period, and they're spending it on things that make them smile and iconic experiences. Yeah, we're seeing strong returns to spending levels just in the way that we anticipated.
Bryan, if I could add just one more point on the GES side. I think it's important to note that, you know, our target of 20% flow through on the incremental revenue, we were able to hit that in the third quarter, year-over-year. The incremental revenue in the third quarter of 2021 over 2020 had 20% flow through or greater.
Okay, great. Then just lastly, within the Pursuit division, you know, the opening of Sky Lagoon and now FlyOver Las Vegas are clearly important for the, you know, growth trajectory of revenues there. Will you in the 10-Q kinda share with us what kind of volumes you're doing at those properties?
It's early still, so what I can, I'll share with you a couple of things. We for 2020, if you look at it, and I'm gonna go first on a same-store basis, so I'm excluding Sky Lagoon, Golden Skybridge, and FlyOver Las Vegas, just to give you an indication on returns, and I'll mention those. In 2020, you know, today we're aboout 602,000 visitors. 2021, that number was 979 at the end of the quarter, and obviously it's grown from there. Year to date, 2019 about 2.1 million visitors, 2020 600,000, and 2021 1.2 million. As you know, our performance at Sky Lagoon is within our expectations and doing really well and really quite pleased with how that's performing.
Golden Skybridge exceeding expectations in our first year, and if you recall, that was a very quick move on our part to get that attraction up and rolling and finished and to be able to open. We had a slight delay with kind of Health Canada rules. Really happy with how that performed. Vegas is building momentum every day. You know, it's early to really be talking about Vegas yet, but we're excited about how things are performing and what lies ahead.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Bryan.
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Mr. Steve Moster, our President and CEO, for any closing remarks.
Yeah, I just wanna say thanks to all of our investors for their support and thanks to all the employees for making Q3 such a success. We'll talk to you in another quarter. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.