Large Canadian travel agencies like Flight Centre and tripcentral.ca have reported massive month-over-month increases in international bookings since April, with Flight Centre reporting a nearly 20 percent increase in bookings in April when compared to March. And May is on track to be their busiest since the pandemic began, though the overall amount is still minimal compared with pre-pandemic times.

However, despite the soaring bookings, experts and travellers say Canada’s requirement around quarantine hotels for returning travellers is the No. 1 factor holding back people from taking trips.

“In the last month, just because the vaccine rollout has really picked up, there’s a lot of inquiry, and people are starting to book for the fall, winter and into early 2022 period,” says Flight Centre spokeswoman Allison Wallace. “People really seem to be thinking, ‘I’m going away this winter.’ There’s no question that a year of not being able to travel has people feeling very much like they want something to look forward to.”

Richard Vanderlubbe, president of Hamilton, Ont.-based tripcentral.ca, says 20% of respondents to his company’s survey in February said they would travel immediately, even when vaccination efforts had a long way to go and vaccine supply was limited.

Now, as cases drop sharply and vaccination efforts pick up, Vanderlubbe says there would be many more people willing to book a trip right now if Canada didn’t have an expensive mandatory hotel quarantine for international arrival.

“They are so itching to go, as soon as anything lets up on those restrictions, boom, there’ll be some demand,” he says. “People can tolerate the 14-day quarantine, but it’s the hotel thing that’s really stopping it.”

A representative for a number of hotels in the Caribbean told Travel Industry Today that calls have picked up dramatically since Canada’s vaccination campaign has gained pace, and that bookings are already being made for 2022.

He noted that the hotels were already full into next year (with American travellers) and feared that when Canadians are finally given the nod to travel again that they will have been “left behind” and face difficulties getting space and/or much higher prices.

Both Vanderlubbe and Wallace say most of the bookings they’re seeing are for Mexico and the Caribbean in autumn and winter, as well as for Europe later in 2022. They say most travellers are hoping that many COVID-19 restrictions will have been scaled back by then.

Vanderlubbe says there could be a ‘flash’ of demand in August for European destinations as well if restrictions ease before the summer break is over.

Nora Downer, a 25-year-old Toronto resident, says her August trip to England to visit friends and her boyfriend’s family will hinge on whether travel restrictions ease.

She says she felt the need to book last month because she wanted to lock in a low rate and get her schedule sorted before a possible boom in travel demand when Canada’s reopening gets further underway.

Vanderlubbe says public sentiment around travel has certainly changed in the past couple months, and that his company would get hate mail if they sent out advertising e-mails that even mentioned travel destinations just a couple months ago.

“Now, (if advertising) for November forward, we’re not getting the pushback that we used to,” he adds.

Still, people like Downer say they’re being judged for their decision to book a trip later this August, even though she expects to have her second vaccine shot by then.

“When I told my parents I was going, there was definitely judgement there, like ‘what do you think you’re doing?”’ says Downer. “I think travel is one of the things that people are still the most worried about.”

Last week an Angus Reid reported that close to 80% of Canadians it surveyed in May supported keeping Canada’s border closed until at least September, but also pointed out that people who travelled frequently and recently (before the pandemic) were much more supportive of opening the border sooner. Similarly, opinions were considerably more favourable for opening travel to vaccinated individuals than those who aren’t.