Costs a drag on Canadian winter holiday planning
There’s no doubt that Canadians are craving a winter holiday, but financial pressures are threatening to spoil the trip according to a new survey from Allianz Global Assistance.
In the winter edition of its Global Travel Confidence Index, the Allianz survey found that 72% of Canadian travellers say they desperately need a vacation, while just 41% of Canadians overall are planning a winter vacation.
Concerns over money were the top barrier to taking a trip, as two-thirds (66%) of Canadians not planning to travel said they don’t have the money to travel or don’t want to spend the money, while 30% said they find traveling has become too expensive.
The survey found that Canadian travellers plan to spend an average of $2,592 CAD per person on a winter vacation, but it also found wide differences in spending plans between the generations, with Gen Z travellers planning to spend the least at $1,790 CAD, while Boomers plan to spend the most at $4,306 CAD.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of Canadian travellers said they are reducing non-essential spending to afford their trip, while half (50%) of Canadian travellers are scaling back their vacation plans rather than cancelling them.
In addition to cost, Canadian travellers identified travel delays (62%), safety and security (61%), geopolitical concerns (61%), illness (55%), extreme weather (55%) and medical emergencies (51%) as their top concerns when planning a trip.
Not surprisingly, travel insurance emerged as a way to manage these risks, as a strong majority of Canadian travellers (73%) said they have already purchased or are likely to purchase travel insurance to help protect their trip.
When asked about their travel planning, 41% of Canadian travellers surveyed said they have used or plan to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help plan their vacation. A third (33%) of travellers said they plan to invest more in luxury travel experiences in the coming year, demonstrating the continued appeal of luxury travel. Nearly three in ten (29%) Canadian travellers said they prefer to take their pet(s) when they travel.
Kyle Sparkman, Managing Director of Allianz Partners Canada, said that: “Canadians are telling us that travel matters to them, even when it requires making some difficult financial choices. When you’ve scaled back your plans or cut spending elsewhere to make a vacation possible, protecting that investment becomes even more important.”
Said Sparkman: “Travel insurance is a smart way to protect those hard-earned plans from the unexpected and give Canadians greater confidence to enjoy the time away they’ve worked hard to prioritize.”
