Lifted travel mandates should give peace of mind to Kamloops travellers

Sonja Thomas is a travel agent at TravelWise.

“We have a lot of people travelling already, and they’re not really too concerned about the travel rules because the majority of the people that we have been seeing have been vaccinated so it won’t affect that part of it too much,” said Thomas.

“I think it’ll give a lot of peace of mind.”

Thomas is happy to see the end of the controversial ArriveCAN app, because it was hard to for some people to upload the needed paperwork before travelling.

“Not a lot of people are savvy at how to upload information. [Recently] there haven’t been many glitches but definitely at first there were issues with it not working — the QR code you needed would disappear — it was a bit of a nightmare.”

While those arriving in Canada no longer need to follow pandemic rules, those heading south will still face restrictions.

“The important thing that people need to realize — people think that all the rules are dropped — they are for Canada, but nothing’s been changed yet for the U.S.,” said Thomas.

“I had some people really excited to go back to the U.S. now that aren’t vaccinated, but we don’t have an indication yet of if or when the U.S. is gonna change their rules.”

For Kamloops Airport Manager Ed Ratuski, the changes are coming at an opportune time.

“Coming into the winter season, that’s important for us because Kamloops receives a lot of international passengers during the ski season,” said Ratuski.

“With those restrictions lifted, we’re looking forward to welcoming many more passengers than we have in the last two years.”

As YKA is a smaller airport with typically short lines, both Ratuski and Thomas predict that these changes should have minimal effects on travellers leaving the Kamloops Airport.

by Stephanie Swensrude

Lifted travel mandates should give peace of mind to Kamloops travellers

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