Travel agents struggle to stay open after ‘devastating’ pandemic year without bookings
Travel agent Karen Weber has only booked four new trips since the pandemic started last March. It’s the same number of employees she once had.
She knew there was no way to make that math work. So she shut down her New Hamburg, Ont., travel agency, southwest of Kitchener, in January.
“It’s not the way I intended to end my career,” she said. “I don’t see any travel for a while.”
Weber worked for 34 years in travel, one of the industries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Ontario alone, visits from the US and abroad in 2020 were