Only 11 % of Quebecers are hoping to travel outside of the province, by October

Photo: Olivier Zuida The Duty
The village of les Éboulements, in the Charlevoix region

The pandemic will give the pace to the summer holidays. The impact of the containment measures on the finances of households, and restrictions on international travel will be severely felt.

In its annual survey on vacation plans, CAA-Quebec holds that only a person in two plans to take a vacation this summer, compared to 74 % in the survey last year. “It is clear that Quebecers wish to take their vacation later, go less far to travel by car and spend less. “They are many (77 % of respondents) to declare a desire to stay in Quebec (compared with 59% in 2019), 46 % of holidaymakers want to travel in Quebec and 31 per cent planning instead to stay at home.

They are only 11% expect to travel outside of Quebec by October, ” a proportion that is in sharp decline “. The number, 5 % of leisure travelers plan to travel in Canada, 2 % in the United States, 4 % from elsewhere in the world.

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Timid recovery flights

This hesitation can be seen in the data of Air Canada. The chief financial officer of Air Canada Michael Rousseau, said on Tuesday that the airline starts to see “some improvement” in bookings for domestic flights, but international travel will not be undertaken to the best probably that when governments begin to lift the travel restrictions, one can read in a text to The canadian Press.

Speaking in the context of an event for investors organized by the National Bank, Mr. Rousseau stated that the sector of leisure travel in Canada was the first to rise, so that the barriers to travel inter-provincial were reduced. It is expected that business travel national resume as early as September, followed by business travel and leisure international, but he pointed out that the lucrative european market was outside of the business this year. Michael Rousseau recalled that a number of countries including Canada, continued to require that passengers coming or returning from abroad, are isolated for two weeks.

The same uncertainty at the global scale. A public opinion survey conducted during the first week of June showed a larger uncertainty among the travellers. Only 45 % of travellers surveyed had the intention to return the aircraft in the few months following the decline of the pandemic. And 36 % said they want to wait six months, says the international air transport Association (IATA, in English). This is a net change of tone. Not later than in April last year, 61 % of passengers said they would do it again to travel a few months after the decline of the pandemic, while 21 % were planning to wait about six months, recalled the Association, which represents 290 airlines claiming 82 % of air traffic in the world.

Among the other comments from industry, bookings are currently down 82 % compared to June 2019. IATA added : “The reservations made 20 days or more in advance accounted for 29 % of total bookings in may 2020, a decrease compared to the proportion of 49 % in 2019. Similarly, 41 % of the bookings made in may were made in the three days preceding the flight, more than double the 18 % observed in may 2019. “

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