Travel agencies are seeing a surge in overseas bookings as Spring Break approaches, but a possible surge will depend on how much federal government eases COVID testing rules -19, estimates the airline industry.
Bookings to sun destinations through the Tripcentral.ca platform are now over 50% of their pre-pandemic levels, with a slight increase over the weekend. Rumor has it that testing requirements could be reduced, company president Richard Vanderlubbe said.
The calls come and go so quickly that Vanderlubbe says he’s struggling to hire enough staff to handle them, after his company had to lay off nearly 60 per cent of its employees and close 26 of its offices in Ontario and across the country. the Atlantic provinces.
“The entire industry sees that we are understaffed right now, for this increase that is coming. And we’re still dealing with cancellations that happened before and subsequent rebookings” — a task that is particularly time-consuming for consumers and agents, he said in a phone interview.
Flight Center spokeswoman Allison Wallace predicts a sustained industry rebound, saying confidence in travel safety is growing because around 80% of Canadians are now double-vaccinated. “We are extremely busy as we have seen a significant increase in inquiries and bookings. Last year […]there was a lot more uncertainty around restrictions, and border requirements were changing regularly,” she said in an email.
“PCR testing on arrival is the biggest deterrent for people right now, and if the government does in fact announce its removal [ou même un test antigénique rapide à la place], we expect to see bookings increase significantly beyond March Break. »
While bookings for next month remain at 40% of pre-pandemic levels, the number of departures has increased more than eight times from a year earlier, when Canadian airlines suspended flights to sun destinations.
Ottawa continues to mandate pre-departure and arrival molecular testing, even as airlines and infectious disease specialists call for an end to travel testing and countries like Denmark, Switzerland and the UK UK remove requirements for vaccinated passengers.
Clear deadlines requested
The Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable calls on the federal government to establish a roadmap with clear timelines on the withdrawal of pre-departure and arrival testing, isolation rules for vaccinated passengers and their children , as well as travel advisories.
“Since the start of the pandemic, only 1% of all COVID-19 cases in Canada have been travel-related, and throughout the last wave, the test positivity rate in communities has reached ten times this that it was on our borders,” the Round Table said in a letter to the Prime Minister on Monday.
Travel rules were designed to prevent the virus from entering the country, but community spread is now responsible for around 99% of all infections, the Dr Zain Chagla, infectious disease physician at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton and associate professor at McMaster University.
PCR tests often show positive results for weeks after a diagnosis of COVID-19, unnecessarily preventing those infected during the Omicron wave from flying into the country, the D continued.r Dominik Mertz, director of the division of infectious diseases at McMaster.
The extent of travel resumption will depend on the degree to which testing is reduced.