While coach travel has gradually resumed over the past year, the situation is different for group tours organized abroad. The withdrawal of the requirement for a mandatory screening test to enter Canada as of April 1 could, however, mark the beginning of a real recovery.
“We see the wave coming at high speed”, predicts the sales and marketing director of Tours Chanteclerc, Marie-Eve Bédard. She said Ottawa’s lifting of the advisory earlier this week asking Canadians to avoid cruises and the end of mandatory COVID-19 testing for all fully vaccinated travelers will be “a big difference” in supply and demand for organized group tours. Several tour operators, including Tours Chanteclerc, were waiting for this announcement to relaunch their group tours abroad.
“The reality of an individual trip and that of a group trip are totally different, especially in the current context, notes Ms. Bédard. In a group trip of two or three days to New York, for example, where you have to plan time for the tests of 30 or 40 people, it complicates the organization.
Despite these constraints, some tour operators have organized tours outside of Canada in recent months. Voyages Gendron has resumed its coach tours in the United States, at maximum capacity, and relaunched its ski trips in Europe a few weeks ago. “We have reached a hundred departures [Canada and the United States] planned for the coming season, underlines Marc-Olivier Gagné, director of digital development. We are starting to add more trips to New York. There is interest. It’s starting to be felt more and more.”
On board the coach, wearing a mask is compulsory and the cabin is disinfected twice a day. “Since we resumed group travel, we have had no positive cases,” says Jonathan Gloutnay, director of coach travel at Voyages Gendron.
Despite the announcement on Thursday of the withdrawal of mandatory screening tests to enter Canada, it could take weeks before a real resumption of international supply is felt. “For the spring, we have already canceled our departures because it was still too uncertain,” says Marie-Eve Bédard.