What Keeps You Up At Night?

If you ask, Joel Ostrov, president – Canada East for Direct Travel what keeps him up at night, he’ll tell you: “My only concern for the future of this industry is the number of great people the travel industry as a whole has lost during the pandemic, many of whom will never return to the business … As an industry, the travel sector needs to find a way to attract new and younger talent to this wonderful business.”

Ostrov also weighed in on whether the industry’s recovery was going the way that he’d expected it to go.

He told Canadian Travel Press that: “In some ways, the recovery was expected to be robust. There was so much pent-up demand for travel after 2 years of living with the pandemic, that our team at Direct Travel did expect a strong recovery, predicting a return to 75% of pre-COVID travel spend by the end of September.”

On the other hand, Ostrov continued: “We did not expect the demand for leisure travel to go through the roof. It is incredible how strong the demand actually is, especially for trips to Europe for the summer and early fall.”

But he added that: “We did expect a more robust demand for corporate travel. This has materialized domestically, but not in trans-border or international travel.

Canada’s late decision to eliminate mandatory pre-departure testing, and now reinstating the random testing upon return to Canada, is keeping the corporate recovery significantly slower than leisure travel.”

For the full story, check out the latest issue of CANADIAN TRAVEL PRESS.