A new poll has found that Canadians this year are increasingly choosing to take domestic vacations thanks to plunging Canadian dollar, which yesterday closed at 76.70, or the lowest level since 2004.
Insights West revealed July 23 that 62% of those surveyed, in a national sample of leisure travelers, said that the declining Loonie has a “significant” or a “medium” impact on their travel plans.
Leisure travellers in Quebec and B.C. are feeling the greatest impact of the low dollar – 69% and 64%, respectively, according to the poll.
Curiously, those who live in Alberta are the most likely to say the declining dollar has had no impact on their travel plans (20% vs. 14% nationally), the poll found. Perhaps that is because people in that oil-rich province, which is grappling with unemployment at a four and a half year high, had already decided not to travel.
Among Canadian leisure travellers who feel impacted by the weak loonie, 19% said they have already cancelled a trip they were planning to make to the United States, and 49% said they will vacation in other areas of Canada instead of visiting the United States.
The poll was of 1,781 Canadians between June 11 and 15.
"The margin of error is 2.3%, which is pretty low," Pollster and Insights West vice-president Mario Conseco told Business in Vancouver. "This is our second national poll of the year on this so we wanted to make sure that this was a big one."
