Boy, did we need to get out of town. After a couple years of being cooped up by COVID, Canadians seemed to have another pandemic… the travel bug.
We’re not discouraged by higher prices or even snafus resulting in cancelled or delayed flights. There are some worthwhile tidbits in this story for Saskatchewan’s tourism industry.
RBC has examined how we saw the lifting of COVID restrictions from a travellers’ point-of-view.
It turns out we were itching for a holiday even with the problems associated with an industry that was short 130,000 workers or 20 per cent of its workforce. In fact, 10 million of us returned from trips abroad in the first four months of this year – that’s 134 per cent higher than before the pandemic.
The bank’s data shows spending is 30 per cent higher than pre-COVID levels. They also tracked where people are looking to visit by tracking search engine inquiries. On that one, Saskatchewan was dead last among the provinces, even trailing Nunavut while three Atlantic provinces topped the list. Maybe we need a spicy tourism promotion campaign.
