No rush across border as Canada welcomes U.S travellers, but there's new hope, says Calgary tourism boss

The opening of Canada's border to fully vaccinated Americans this week is widely welcomed by those working in Alberta's tourism industry, but many say they've yet to see any uptick in bookings from U.S. travellers.

"I haven't actually really seen any increase in bookings from Americans yet, which is surprising," said Jeff Bullock, who runs two tourism companies out of Banff, Alpine Air Adventures and Mountain Park Transportation. 

He says that with the loosening of border restrictions, he anticipated at least a small wave of bookings over the past few days. 

"But there actually hasn't been any. And if anything, you know, the few that we had, people have decided to cancel," he said.

Bullock says he's not sure if that's the result of unease over Alberta's decision to remove all pandemic restrictions, or if people are just nervous to travel in general because of the delta variant.

Deborah Yedlin, CEO of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, says there is reason to believe that Alberta's looser COVID rules could be scaring away visitors.

"We cannot be seen to be offside with other jurisdictions because people are going to be concerned with safety," she said at a WestJet roundtable discussion on Tuesday.

"And anecdotally, I am hearing that there are organizations looking at the province and being concerned in terms of their workers and what their safety could be."

Tourism Calgary CEO Cindy Ady says she expects it will take awhile for bookings to pick up, but she thinks the industry now at least has the tools it needs to plan ahead.

"It's a great first step in having and restoring travel into the province," she said, while noting she hasn't seen any great rush across the border yet.

But Ady says she is confident of a recovery, even if the industry still faces more pivoting and adjusting.

"Our phones are starting to light up when it comes to future opportunities, when it comes to business travel or convention travel, or those kinds of opportunities," she said.