Toronto is once again marketing itself in the U.S. as a great travel destination. The city has done okay with domestic travel, but U.S. visitors are key to Toronto’s tourism, as foreign visitors tend to stay longer and spend more than domestic visitors. The campaign is called “You Gotta See What We See,” and uses “enthusiastic, passionate Torontonians with stories we believe will resonate with our US audiences specifically.” Sounds like a smart plan to me. Many would-be travellers love to check out Tik Tok and Instagram pages before they book a trip, so why not use those influencers? Geographically, Read more
International Air Transport Association
An influential international airline travel group has again called on the Canadian government to urgently discontinue its COVID-19 related travel restrictions. “These are now out of step with the global trend of lifting travel restrictions and are partly responsible for the ongoing delays and disruption affecting air travelers across Canada,” the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in a statement. “Canada has become a total outlier in managing COVID-19 and travel,” said Peter Cerda, IATA’s Regional Vice President for the Americas. “Though governments across the globe are rolling back restrictions, the Government of Canada is reinstating them.” IATA says the Read more
International airline traffic could surpass pre-COVID levels by 2024, a new study says. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is projecting that overall traveller numbers will hit 4 billion in 2024, which would put it at 103% of 2019’s total. “The trajectory for the recovery in passenger numbers from COVID-19 was not changed by the omicron variant,” said IATA’s Director General, Willie Walsh. “People want to travel. And when travel restrictions are lifted, they return to the skies. “There is still a long way to go to reach a normal state of affairs, but the forecast for the evolution in Read more
Europe and the world are poised for a travel rebound, plus tourism optimism in the Canadian Maritimes and news about rules for visiting Hawai’i and Belize. Today’s Jim Byers Travel news update. EUROPE POISED FOR TRAVEL REBOUND THIS YEAR The European Travel Commission (ETC) predicts tourist arrivals to be just 20% below pre-pandemic levels in 2022, according to Hotel News Resource. The International Air Transport Association says that, worldwide, there was an 11-percentage point improvement between the January and February periods for air travel, which it said was the fastest such increase for any two-week period since the pandemic began. Read more
