How tourism changed in Canada during the pandemic
Canada's hard-hit tourism industry is adapting to the new times.
Some experts say Canada's tourism industry lost about a third of its workforce in the first 10 weeks after the global pandemic was announced.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on all areas of the Canadian economy, but the tourism sector has fared worse than many others.
"The reality is that tourism has been hit very hard. And we know it will take much longer to recover than the rest of the country's economy as a whole," says Philip Mondor, CEO of Tourism HR Canada. — After the global pandemic was announced, we lost about a third of our workforce (880,000) workers within 10 weeks. And we're still about 500,000 workers short.
But, according to Mondor, employers in the tourism industry did not leave the laid-off and downsized workers to their fate. They tried to reach out to them and provide assistance. More attention was paid to supporting the mental health of the affected workers, and psychologists worked with many people.
Role reversal
As early as last summer, it was clear that the Canadian travel industry would have to rethink all of its strategies and workforce management plans in order to cope with the economic changes.
Employees of travel agencies who managed to stay in their workplaces faced a lot of innovations. As Mondor explained, previously they all interacted with travel consumers in person, face to face. But with the pandemic, their job duties have changed the most. Now they can't just do their usual job, they're rethinking business models and looking for other possible scenarios to interact with customers.
Employees of travel agencies are now retooling their knowledge, upgrading their skills, exploring new opportunities to attract tourists, developing new destinations for tourist trips, etc.
"With the pandemic and even after coronavirus restrictions have been lifted, it is important for tourism employers and their employees to think about reviewing their entire business model," Mondor explained. — They don't need to remember how they worked before, they need to think about how to move forward. And try to understand how their business can develop in the future.
How Canadians are planning their holidays in 2021
According to a recent statistical survey, more than half of Canadians (54%) are unlikely to go on summer vacation this year. Thirty-one per cent of Canadians plan to travel, however, which is almost three times more than last year, when only 14 per cent were going on vacation.
Among those planning their summer vacation, 63% are looking for day trips in their local area, while the remainder want to go on a longer trip, but within their province.
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10% of Canadians surveyed are not opposed to visiting other countries or the United States. When asked when they would feel comfortable travelling to the U.S. again, about 7% of respondents cite the period between now and December, 57% want to go to the States next year, and about 20% say they are unlikely to ever travel to the States at all.
