The travel rebound is surging to levels even experts didn’t expect. Global luxury travel network Virtuoso gathered data and insights from its network of travel advisors, preferred partners and high net worth/ultra-high net worth clientele based on its data warehouse of more than $49.5 billion in transactions and an ongoing series of surveys. The company found that, despite the challenges, travel sales in 2023 are pacing 47 percent higher than 2019. Virtuoso also reports strong interest in summer visits to the United States, Italy, France, Canada, and Greece. The results of the Virtuoso report were shared at luxury travel’s leading Read more
Canada
Airlift between Canada and Australia is back to 97% of pre-pandemic levels, Tourism Australia officials say. Speaking to the website OpenJaw.com at an Australia tourism event in Los Angeles recently, Tourism Australia’s Managing Director, Phillipa Harrison, said Canada “has been a surprising and delightful market for us. It’s quietly growing.” Harrison said Canadians like to explore. “They disperse into the region, which is important for us as a tourism economy. They have the same propensity as Australians to travel.” Tourism Australia data shows that lift between the two countries has been almost fully restored – at 97 per cent of Read more
Travellers coming into Canada by the land border can benefit from a one-time exemption if they forget to submit their information through the ArriveCan application, the National Post reports. Ottawa quietly made the change in May for Canadian citizens and permanent residents, and extended it to all foreign nationals, including American citizens, at the end of the month of July, confirmed the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) on Friday. CBSA spokesperson Judith Gadbois-St-Cyr told the Post the measures are “temporary” for fully vaccinated travellers and that the rules were changed to “provide more flexibility” to those “who may have been Read more
The recent decline in gas prices is a positive indicator for travel for the rest of the summer and into the fall, according to the latest Longwoods International tracking study of American travellers. While 31% of travellers said gas prices would greatly impact their decision to travel in the next six months, that is down dramatically from the 43% of travellers who expressed the same sentiment just a month ago. “Falling gas prices is an automatic plus for the travel industry,” said Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International. “And if fuel costs continue to decline as expected, more Read more
The federal government insists that Canada’s airports are getting much better in terms of delays and cancellations. Government officials put out a release this week saying that, for the week of August 1-7, three per cent of flights planned for Canada’s top four airports were cancelled, compared to 12% over the same period in July. From August 1-7, more than 85% of flights from the top four airports left on time, or within one hour of their scheduled departure. That’s up from 75% for the first week of July. OTHER METRICS Holding of aircraft at Toronto Pearson International Airport * Read more
