Canada’s new federal tourism minister says Canadian tourism officials need to keep marketing Canadian domestic travel. It’s a nice thought. And he’s right. But domestic tourism can’t possibly take the place of international visitors. A recent story in the Globe and Mail noted that visitors to Ontario’s hip Prince Edward County spend an average of $74 per day. Visitors spend more than $400 per day, which is more than five times as much. This is an issue all around the world, and all across Canada. Locals who drive to a destination, say, from Calgary to Banff, might buy a family Read more
December 2021
The best-known COVID-19 expert in the U.S. says the American government should “seriously” consider requiring domestic travellers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. “There’s requirements that you might want to get if you want to get into college, or you want to go to a university, or you want to work in certain places,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on MSNBC on Monday. “When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated. If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.” CNBC Read more
Messy weather in western North America is wreaking havoc on airlines and airline passengers again today. As of 5 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday (December 27), the website flightaware.com was reporting more than 2,850 flight cancellations for the day. More than 1/3 of those some 1,100 in all, were within, into or out of the United States. The biggest culprit appeared to be unusual winter weather in Seattle, where it was -4 Celsius at 2 p.m. local time. There was considerable snow in Seattle on Sunday. Seattle-Tacoma airport had 16% of its flights cancelled on Monday, flightaware.com reported. Alaska Airlines, Read more
Several ocean cruise ships were turned away from ports of call or were prohibited from letting passengers disembark in the Americas this week because of Covid-19 cases aboard, CNN reports. That’s nothing like the massive disruption when the pandemic hit in March of last year, but it comes at a time when the cruise industry was just getting back in the swing of things. An Expedia Group study released in late November found that there had been more than a 20% month on month increase in demand in Canadian cruise searches for travel in the fourth quarter of 2021 and Read more
A new survey conducted by JourneyWoman shows that the pandemic hasn’t diminished women’s desire for solo travel. Conducted between December 13 and 17, the JourneyWoman TravelReady Outlook 2022 survey reflects both optimism and caution, with 51% of women planning to travel internationally from January and June 2022 — dependent on pandemic guidance and travel advisories. In response to the new variant, the survey also shows that the majority of solo travellers (43%) are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, and 30% have not cancelled or postponed travel plans for 2022. “Seasoned solo travellers travel on their own terms, and in Read more
