Travel Exclusive: Key Trends for the Travel Industry: Autumn 2006

In The changing Canadian travel-distribution landscape, we look at how a myriad of changes over the past four years have altered the way Canadians purchase their travel. While the use of travel agents continues to wane, online channels are grabbing a growing number of Canadian vacationers. What hasn’t changed is the gap between the lookers and the bookers, leaving lots of room for growth in online purchasing.

Our second article examines how CTRI is developing new, short-term leading indicators for the Canadian tourism industry. These are designed to give the edge to operators who have faced numerous challenges over the past five years, including everything from terrorist attacks, avian flu and the SARS outbreak to the proposed U.S. passport regulations, high oil prices and the soaring Canadian dollar. The good news is that our preliminary Tourism Leading Indicator Indices show that Canadian tourism is on a definite upswing.