Why Do Canadians Hate Winter?

If you’re wondering how bad winter weather, snowstorms, or extreme cold affect web-traffic, calls and bookings to sun destinations, well a survey of 2,000 Canadians – conducted by tripcentral.ca in mid-February – asked 20 probing questions about the most hated aspects of Canadian winters and what the the quick fix would be.

Answer: a sun vacation.

As for the hated aspects of the Canadian winter, 55% cited “cold” as their most hated thing about winter, followed by “snow” at 25% and “ice or icy” at 10% when asked an open-ended question.

But when prompted with 7 unpleasant aspects of winter, “driving in the winter” was the most reviled followed closely by scraping ice off the windshield, slush, grey skies, getting dark early, etc.

A third of Canadians shovel their own snow, with men taking on most of the duties (43%) more than women (26%). Women were more likely to say shoveling snow is a “family event” 16% of the time, compared to 11% of men.

Not surprisingly, snow days are seen favourably by a majority of Canadians, with 54% agreeing that they are “a good thing for safety, getting people off the road.” However, 21% agreed that “they’re pretty lame for the most part – it’s winter in Canada, get over it.” Those aged 55+ and men were more likely to think snow days were lame.

53% say their mind will drift to a warm sunny vacation while experiencing the most hated aspects of winter, mostly because of memories of past trips.

Browsing travel sites is popular while being “snowed in.” Women do it more than men (40% vs 35%).  People who take a sun vacation every year or most years, report browsing on travel sites even more (55%) when snowed in.

Richard Vanderlubbe, president of tripcentral.ca, observed: “The survey results are consistent with what we see. We see spikes in our web traffic when large markets like the GTA are snowed in. It starts slow as people dig out, then the traffic, calls and bookings follow. The greater effect is overall. A cold or snowy winter will drive demand and prices up. A mild winter drives prices down. This winter, prices are holding up and many people are out there waiting for prices to drop at the last minute. It happens less in a tough winter.”

For more, check out tripcentral.ca’s blog at https://www.tripcentral.ca/blog/canadians-hate-winter-snow-days-sun-vacations/ .