YOLO: Canadians ready to travel this Labour Day weekend, despite cost and chaos

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You might think all those horror stories coming out of Canadian and international airports would have people thinking twice about a Labour Day weekend getaway.

You’d think wrong.

New statistics from the travel site Kayak show that — despite flight delays and cancellations, a glitchy ArriveCan app that remains mandatory, and widespread airport and luggage chaos — huge numbers of Canadians are thinking about travelling on the last long weekend of summer.

Searches for international flights on Kayak for the weekend of Sept. 3-5 are more than double last year, up 104 per cent. Trending destinations include Istanbul, Turkey, up 38 per cent from pre-pandemic 2019; Lisbon, Portugal, up 34 per cent, and Rome up 14 per cent.

But deals are hard to come by with the travel industry struggling to meet surging demand more than two years into the pandemic.

For instance, car rentals continue to soar in price as people choose driving over flying whenever possible. Searches for rentals in Canada are up 58 per cent from 2019, while the average cost of a daily rental has risen to $139 a day — up 102 per cent from 2019 and 33 per cent compared to last year.

International car rentals are only slightly better: Searches are up a whopping 181 per cent over last year, while the cost of a daily rental has spiked to $88 on average, up 67 per cent from 2019 and 18 per cent from last year.

Hotels are also hot. Searches for Canadian hotel rooms over Labour Day weekend are up 32 per cent from 2019 and 23 per cent over last year. The average price of a hotel room in Canada is now $260 a night, up 15 per cent over both 2019 and 2021. International rooms have hit $217 a night, up 17 per cent from 2019, though four per cent lower than last year.

There are some deals out there. Kayak says the cheapest domestic flights for Labour Day travel are to Calgary (average $330 for a round trip), Halifax ($385), Toronto ($391), Vancouver ($419) and Montreal ($422).

Most international travel is, of course, much higher. The best deals are New York (CDN$424), Lisbon ($930), Paris ($971), London ($1,176) and Rome ($1,527).

The data comes from Kayak searches in Canada from May 1 to Aug. 5 for travel plans between Sept. 1 and 5, with data from previous years using similar dates corresponding to the long weekend in those years.

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