‘A move in the right direction’: Travel agencies react to new travel guidelines

Travel agencies are viewing recent changes out of Ottawa as a positive first step to getting the travel industry back on track.

On Tuesday, federal Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos announced that travellers who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and who are coming into or returning to Canada can use a rapid antigen test instead of a PCR test.

The rapid test must be approved by the country the person is travelling from and must be administered by a laboratory, health-care entity or telehealth service.

“It’s a move in the right direction. We were kind of hoping it would go a bit further,” said Julie Skinner, the director for Western Canada for sales and operations for Vision Travel.

Travellers will still be randomly selected for PCR tests when arriving in Canada but will no longer have to quarantine while waiting for results if they are fully vaccinated.

Kids under 12 who are not fully vaccinated but are travelling with fully vaccinated adults will also no longer have to quarantine.

Ottawa is also no longer recommending against non-essential travel, just asking people to be cautious while abroad.

But certified travel consultant Sandra Hildebrand says one of the biggest hurdles for travellers to get over is still there.

“The big fear of travelling and leaving Canada is you are going to test positive, which means you are going to have to quarantine where you are,” Hildebrand said.

“Dropping the PCR test is going to be cheaper, but you still have to do an antigen test and antigen tests aren’t always very accurate and if you test positive, you still have to stay.”

But the changes do appear to have more people ready to head out and travel once again.

“Back in November and early December, before the Omicron variant showed up, we were trending far, far ahead. There was a huge pent-up demand, a large appetite for people who had been mostly stuck at home for about a year and a half,” Skinner said.

“We feel now that the cases are going down in Canada and with this new change with the government restrictions that people are definitely more interested in going.”