Key takeaways:
- Vacationers plan briefer trips, cut expenditures, and even fly rather than drive.
- Numerous Canadians may be reconsidering their road trip plans as the price of filling up impacts new highs across Canada.
Wayne Gass prepared a scenic road journey for the summer:
- Drive along the Gaspé Peninsula.
- Hit the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia.
- Loopback up to Prince Edward Island.
But with gas now costing upwards of $2 a liter in the Greater Montreal municipality of Vaudreuil-Dorion, where he stays, Gass states he’ll be sticking nearer to home — may be taking shorter journeys to Ottawa or Mont-Tremblant, Que., instead.
“Nothing on a large scale of running down the East Coast, which I will miss because I adore going there. It’s beautiful countryside.”
Also read: Quebec to lift indoor mask order on May 14
Gass is one of multiple Canadians who may be reconsidering their road trip plans as gas costs hit new highs across the nation, topping $2 a liter in some places.
Those record costs, plus increasing prices for everything from food to accommodation, add extra delay to the post-pandemic bounceback that the travel industry was banking on.
“What might have been a fantastic year [for travel] will be a little quieter than we might have expected,” Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada.
A new statement from the Conference Board says there is enormous pent-up demand for the trip after two years of rules due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, it states that higher gas and other goods costs will be a “significant deterrent” to travel. And although more Canadians are possible to take road journeys this year, they likely won’t be “bucket list” travels like Gass was planning.
Source – cbc.ca
