Last year, Garnet Miller decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of taking a cruise down the Mississippi River.
He started planning the trip for the fall of 2015, and started saving up.
That was when the Canadian dollar was worth approximately US$0.89.
At the end of trading Wednesday, it sat at 75.06 cents U.S.
It’s a big enough decrease that it might have some Canadians pushing pause on their plans to travel south.
Not Miller, though.
“I’m at the stage where I like to travel,” he said by way of an explanation.
“It hasn’t stopped me.”
Tanya Lowe, a travel consultant at Goliger’s TravelPlus in Waterloo, says Miller’s situation seems to be the norm this summer.
“If people want to travel, they’re going to do it,” she said in an interview.
Most vacation packages are sold in Canadian dollars, Lowe says.
Even trips to the U.S. are often priced out in Canadian dollars – meaning the low dollar’s only impact would be on money spent while on vacation.
“It’ll be the incidentals – his meals, that sort of thing – that will be in U.S. dollars,” she said of one man for whom she recently booked a trip to New York City.
Regardless of the Canadian dollar’s performance, Lowe recommends booking vacations as far in advance as possible, as tour operators often offer incentives to customers who book far ahead.
