There was cautious optimism for travel’s return at this point in the pandemic – but it all came to a halt just a few months later, when the omicron variant arrived on the scene.
The headline for this edition of ‘It Happened This Week’ is: Agents, suppliers see an uptick in group bookings, despite the ‘COVID coaster’
As the story notes, even in atypical times – a pandemic surely qualifies – there are booking trends, and based on feedback from tour operators and travel advisors, that included a strong surge in group bookings. After more than a year of pandemic restrictions, clients were eager to reconnect with friends and family. And even if enquiries were still outpacing bookings for many agents, “I do feel confident that we will see more commitment in the coming months,” said one advisor.
But if the pandemic taught the travel industry anything, it was ‘expect the unexpected’. In late November, just about three months after this story ran, WHO officials announced a new COVID-19 variant called omicron. Omicron was even more transmissible than previous variants, and within just four weeks it was the dominant strain around the world. Then-Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced that all air arrivals to Canada, except from the U.S., must be tested on arrival at their airport in Canada and isolate until the results of their test are known. The travel industry was back in the trenches, for a while at least.
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