Canada Blew Its Covid Advantage and 9 Other Top Travel Stories This Week

Throughout the week we are posting original stories night and day covering news and travel trends, including on the impact of coronavirus. Every weekend we will offer you a chance to read the most essential stories again in case you missed them earlier.

Canada’s Vaccine Misstep Is Hurting Tourism Recovery: Things change fast in a pandemic. Canada ranked first in tight Covid restrictions, then it trailed the U.S. in vaccinations. Now it’s playing catch up, while asking Canadians to help by spending the bulk of their vacation savings at home this summer, and not next door. Will they listen?

‘Anti-Asian Hate’ Big Obstacle for U.S. Tourism as China Outbound Travel Restarts: More and more, the unfriendliness of a destination has unsafe undercurrents to it. The worst that could happen is if Covid is gone, but anti-Asian hate that it has bred lives on and becomes the biggest obstacle to getting Chinese and Asian tourists to travel again.

7 Takeaways From Tripadvisor’s Confidential Pitch Deck to Hotels: It’s hardly an accident that Tripadvisor is transitioning toward a direct-to-consumer business model after years of Google’s hotel-comparison search eating into Tripadvisor’s business.

Delta, United, Alaska Expect to Break Even by April as Travel Recovery Picks Up Steam: U.S. airlines are bullish on the coronavirus recovery — finally. After a year of losses, some say the long-elusive inflection in bookings occurred in February with all eyes turned to summer when many expect large numbers of vacationers to return to the skies.

3 Big Takeaways From Skift Business Travel and Future of Work Summit: The message for the travel industry is clear: Engage with company travel managers, understand their organization’s culture and DNA, and help them redefine what business travel means after the pandemic.

Phocuswright Founder and Online Travel Pioneer Philip Wolf Dies at 64: Passionate, endlessly curious, entrepreneurial, articulate, loyal and tough, Philip Wolf was a pioneer in online travel. The legions of people he impacted and influenced will no doubt agree.

Blackstone and Starwood Plan $6 Billion Extended Stay America Takeover: Blackstone and Starwood Capital keep returning to Extended Stay America, but their partnership acquisition here shows the two firms see many more deals ahead as reason to keep capital on hand.

The Strong Comeback Case for Hard-Hit Tourist Guides: For tourist guides who have been able to hang on to their jobs, grasp new trends, and buff up on technology, the time to shine is near as travel starts to rebound. Sadly, that’s a smaller group.

Greece Offers Lessons in Redeploying Bloggers to Promote Offbeat Tourism: Greece says it’s all set to welcome tourists in May, as the EU has just unveiled a new Covid-19 pass for travelers. But will the fragmented bloc be able to agree on rights attached to the certificate in time to save the summer?

How Travel Benefits From the Future Decentralized Workplace: Hotels and airlines, rejoice: a larger remote workforce in the future will likely usher in an entirely new type of corporate travel.