The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are You Going To Travel This Summer? What's The Future Of Travel?

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Let's think summer, and let's talk about what you plan to do.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. We're at Thursday of week 15 since The Bridge went daily. Destinations Canada. You ever heard of that? Destinations Canada. It's a crown corporation. Just like, well, just like the CBC is a crown corporation. So in other words, it is owned by the country.

It's owned by the Parliament of Canada. That's where it reports to. But there's kind of an arm's length relationship and the whole idea of Destinations Canada is that it's marketing the country. Mainly overseas. But this is an unusual year. Marketing Canada overseas is probably not such a hot idea right now because nobody's coming in

because nobody's traveling from outside and we're not traveling to outside so I get this call the other day from Ben Cowan Dewar Ben is a friend of mine Ben is the chair of Destinations Canada. But that's not why I know him. I know Ben because he's also the face behind, the name behind, the man behind two of the greatest golf courses in the country. Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links in Cape Breton. And I think you can safely say they are the best golf courses in Canada. We've got a lot of great golf courses here.

I've been lucky enough to play some of them. I'm hoping to play one of them this weekend, which would be my first golf game of the year. But I'm getting off topic here. That's why I know Ben. I know Ben because of Cliffs and Cabot, links to incredible golf courses in Cape Breton. But Ben is also, as I said, chair of Destinations Canada.

So he sends me a note the other day. He says, we're on a new campaign to try and get Canadians moving around Canada. We've got to help in the tourism area. Just like many other small businesses and big businesses in the country, these are tough times because of the pandemic. So can you help? So I agreed to help. Now, here's the thing to keep in mind about tourism in Canada.

Let me give you a couple of facts before I get to the point of what today's podcast is about. Here's a couple of facts. 10% of the jobs in Canada, 10%, one out of 10 jobs in Canada, is in one way or another related, either directly or indirectly, to tourism. A lot of those jobs are under threat right now. Here's another fact. Last year, 2019, Canadians spent $36 billion,

billion dollars, on travel outside the country. All travel, all kinds of travel outside the country, $36 billion. Well, they're not going to be spending that this year because of the pandemic. However, if they did spend half that, just half that money in Canada on tourism, that would make such a difference to so many people who are in the tourism business. All right? So the idea is travel when you can and where you can.

Obviously, there are some restrictions on that front. But you can travel within your province. And in many provinces, you can travel to neighboring provinces. And as I like to say, there isn't a part of this country that isn't welcoming to other Canadians. Not a part of it. You know, I've been all over the world. I've seen a lot of great places.

But when I'm asked, where do you like to go to most? I say I like to go to Canada. I've been to every province, all the territories, and in each one of them, there are exciting things to do and see and people to meet, places to go to. So there is a way safely this year to travel somewhat within your country, even if it's just within an hour or two hours from your local community. I mean, hey, here in Stratford, we depend on tourism. The Stratford Festival depend on tourism Stratford Festival is a big deal

and most of the people who go to the Stratford Festival are coming from outside, they're tourists they eat in Stratford restaurants some of the best restaurants in the country home for the Stratford Chef School here they stay at hotels in Stratford or B&Bs in Stratford. All of those are under threat. All of them.

If people aren't coming in. Or if you don't choose yourself, Stratford could be any town in Canada, to support your local restaurants. Think of your town's restaurants, or your communities, or your part of a big city. Think of your three favorite restaurants. The odds are, if things continue the way they are right now,

the two of those three will be closed by the end of the year. They'll be gone. Gone forever. That's the way things are tracking right now, unless we support them. Okay? So I could go on like this in terms of what Destinations Canada is hoping to achieve. It's hoping to achieve people at least thinking about tourism within their own country this year. Because the odds are you're not going overseas. You're not off to Europe. You're not off to Central America or Southeast Asia.

The odds are this year, you're staying close to home. That doesn't mean you've got to drive from southern Ontario to Nunavut or southern Ontario to BC or Alberta to Newfoundland. You can if you can get an RV. Apparently, they're almost impossible to find right now because people are thinking about this and they're booking things like this because they're going to move within their own country and travel within their own country.

And if they're going to do that, fantastic. That's great. But as I said, you don't have to cross the country. You may just take a day trip or a few day trips outside of your own community, an hour, two hours, down the road. So think about that. So I wanted to say that as we get around to this question of kind of the future of travel after the pandemic. Because people are trying to determine how to live post-pandemic and what travel will be like.

You know, whether it's air travel, whether it's cruise ships, whether it's trains, whether it's cars, whatever it is. Things at the moment are starting to slowly reopen, right, in different parts of the world.

So I'm reading from a piece in Foreign Affairs. A couple of things that they've written of late about the future of travel. Not foreign affairs, foreign policy. And so they asked a number of people to write about what they saw as the future of travel, right? So this article starts off with this. As we enter the first summer of this new era of pandemics, a tenuous easing of travel restrictions has begun.

This month, the countries of the European Union will reopen their internal borders, and they plan to allow travel from outside the bloc sometime in July. They're still toying with the idea of whether they want to open this up to the U.S., given the horrendous situation that's unfolding in the U.S. in terms of new cases. Singapore and China have begun permitting essential travel between their two countries, but only for passengers who test negative for the coronavirus, only for passengers who use a contact tracing app,

and only for passengers who don't deviate from their itinerary. Iceland will allow tourists, and I'm sure you recognize that Iceland's become this great spot to travel to for a lot of people who kind of discovered it in the last five or ten years. Also discovered that Iceland's airline is a pretty good way of getting around the world too. You always have to go through Iceland. But the fares have been great. Iceland will allow tourists, but it plans to test them for the virus when they land at the airport. So this is becoming, you know, part of the process.

We're not talking about waving a thermometer at you. They're talking about doing actual tests. Same with Singapore and China. They're doing tests at the airport, and you have to test negative to be allowed in. Grounded for many months, airlines are beefing up their summer schedules, though the number of flights will be a fraction of their pre-pandemic frequency.

Airports are still mostly ghost towns. Some have even been taken over by wildlife, says foreign policy. And international long-distance travel is all but dead. Around the globe, the collapse of the tourist economy has bankrupted hotels, bankrupted restaurants, bankrupted bus operators, bankrupted car rental agencies, and thrown an estimated 100 million people out of work. A hundred million out of work. Anyway, foreign policy asked a group of different writers to give their thoughts about travel.

I'm not going to read them all. In fact, I'm only going to read, I think, two or three, and just small parts of them, because I think their thoughts are interesting. Give us something to consider about what the future could be like. First one is by Elizabeth Becker. She's the author of Overbooked, The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism.

Excuse me. That's obviously an old book. The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism. It was exploding. Excuse me. That's obviously an old book. The exploding business of travel and tourism. It was exploding in terms of getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Even a year ago. It's exploding in a different way right now. Anyway, here's what Elizabeth Becker writes.

Overnight, much of the world went from over-tourism to no tourism. Since then, locals have seen how their lives have improved. Got it? Locals have seen how their lives have improved without those insane crowds. Clear skies with vistas stretching for miles, a drastic reduction of litter and waste, clean shorelines and canals, and a return of wildlife. You know, I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Just in my own backyard, I can tell the difference in how green everything is and how lush everything is.

And why is that? Could it be that the air is cleaner? I mean, we live more or less in the country, but there's, in normal days, a steady stream of jet traffic going over Stratford, east or west. And I'm not talking about from London, Ontario, or Windsor to Toronto.

I'm talking about from, you know, Detroit to London, Chicago to Paris. You know, there's just a lot normal, in the normal days days of international traffic. And I can sit in my backyard and look at the sky and watch them. You know, they're all up at whatever, 36, 38, 40,000 feet. And they're just a stripe in the sky. But that stripe is some form of pollution, right?

Well, there are a lot fewer of them now. And because there are a lot fewer of them, is that why my garden's greener? There are fewer cars on the road. A lot fewer. Even here in little old Stratford. So, Elizabeth Becker goes on. Smart travellers, talking about the future now,

she painted the picture of the present, smart travellers will trust places with good governance. Smart travellers will trust places with good governance. Smart travelers will trust places with good health systems. They will take fewer trips and they'll stay longer. They will see this pandemic as a forecast of what's to come from the climate crisis. They will act like responsible citizens as well as passionate travelers. So Elizabeth Becker bases those conclusions on the fact this is what her life has been for whatever

the last five or ten years, covering the way we travel, why we travel, where we travel to. And she's basing those conclusions on what she sees the lessons are from this pandemic. Now here's the second one. This will be the only other one I'll read. It's by Rolf Potts. He's the author of four books, including the best-selling travel philosophy primer, Vagabonding, an uncommon guide to the art of long-term world travel.

Okay. What does Rolf have to say? One startling detail about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is that areas with concentrated outbreaks are called hotspots, which is exactly the same phrase the commercial travel industry has used to denote popular and fashionable destinations in the past. We're going to the hotspot. You know, we're going to Miami.

We're going to, you know, someplace in Mexico. We're going to Venice. We're going to London, Paris. Those are the travel hotspots. Well, what are the hotspots we talk about now? Well, today we talk about the hotspots of Texas, Florida, Arizona, California. But we're not talking about them as hotspots to travel to. We're talking about them as hot spots to stay the heck away from. This uncomfortable parallel reminds us that travel

in our globalized era enabled the spread of the virus in a historically unprecedented way. Yep. That's for sure. What have you got planned for your summer? Hey, we're almost at the end of June. It's July 1st next week. Canada Day.

And we can celebrate, and we will celebrate, and we'll find ways to celebrate the birthday of our country, like we do every year. But we'll probably just do it differently than we've done it in the past. You know, I know that I hosted the Canada Day show on CBC Television,

the noon hour show in Ottawa. From the first day they did one, and I think it was 1982 was the first day they did the noon hour Canada Day show. When they called it, they changed it from Dominion Day to Canada Day. And then I, you know, that was 1982, and now I last, the last show I ever did for the CBC was 2017. The last, you know, show in my old role as chief correspondent was 2017,

150th anniversary of the country, Canada Day. So next week, Canada Day. And that sets off, you know, what, the nine or ten weeks of our summer. And we try to enjoy our summer. What are we going to do this year? What are you going to do that you don't normally do? How is your summer going to be different? How are you going to make sure you enjoy it? How are you going to make it an enjoyable time for your friends and your family, your kids,

your grandkids, whatever? How are you going to be able to do that with the kind of restrictions that we're all faced with? And one of those restrictions is the odds are we're not going overseas. You know, for the last 20 years, aside from travel within Canada, which I do a lot of and always do a lot of, I've also gone to Europe, mainly to Scotland, to golf. Not going to happen this summer. And that'll be tough to accept that, but I will replace it with interesting and exciting things

to do within our country. With the new rules that govern our day. Of physical distancing. Of washing our hands, of wearing a mask, of staying more at home than I've ever done before. But all those things will happen, and hopefully they'll happen with you and your friends and your

neighbors and your family too because if we're going to beat this thing and not end up like our friends to the south, we've got to follow the guidelines that are set down. It's brutal south of the border right now. And there's no indication it's going to get any better. And some of the forecasts for the numbers are just staggering. They're horrifying. That can't happen here. We're not going to let it happen here. Right? So don't be shy. Keep your distance, wear your mask, wash your hands, do all the other things that you're asked to do. Okay, enough already.

You can write me. You should write me because tomorrow's Friday. It's the weekend special. I can tell you right now I'm looking for some emails from you, and I always like to get emails from those who haven't written before. So if something has engaged you this week, that would be Bruce Anderson's great chat the other day about what he's found in his research, his polling research, about what Americans are thinking.

It may be this topic we talked about just now in terms of travel and where you're going to go. Where are you going to go? You don't need to write a big long letter. Just tell me where you're going to go and why you've decided to go there. This could be a great opportunity to either discover or rediscover what being a Canadian can be like by supporting your own country

through your travels, through your touring in a summer. That's not to mean you're never going to go anywhere else in the world. This thing is going to pass at some point. But here's an opportunity now, under the, you know, tight confines of the restrictions that exist, of seeing our country, of supporting our country, of getting some of those 10%, those 1 out of 10 Canadian workers who are in the tourist industry, tourism industry, giving them a chance to be working this summer. So anyway, write to me, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com.

I'm anxious to hear from you. And you never know, your letter may make it into tomorrow's weekend special for week 15. All right, this has been the Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.