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.CVOA MEMBER NEWS
Trudeau: Tougher travel rules likely coming this week
Travel Pulse
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his "no travel" talk to a higher level recently, urging Canadians to not only avoid travel to sun destinations but also within Canada.
He also said mandatory quarantines at hotels for people returning or coming to Canada — an idea floated recently by Quebec Premier Francois Legault — is an idea that's under consideration and that tougher measures could be announced soon.
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Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world on Sunday
BC Hotel Associations
Canada has reached a grim new milestone in its fight against COVID-19, with the country’s case count surging well past 700,000, ahead of an expected reduction in shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand on Saturday said she understands Canadians’ concerns about Pfizer’s decision to delay international deliveries while it upgrades its manufacturing facility.
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AHLA statement on bipartisan COVID relief package
AHLA
The following is a statement from Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, on the coronavirus relief package.
“On behalf of the hotel industry, we applaud the House and Senate leadership, along with the Administration, for reaching a bipartisan compromise on this COVID economic relief package. This short-term relief package is a vital step toward helping the hotel industry survive this crisis. The proposed measure provides temporary relief over the next few months and will help thousands of hotels stay open and retain employees.
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.V-O & TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
U.S. Travel Association to advocate for travel tax credits
Travel Pulse
The U.S. Travel Association hopes to meet with the Biden administration soon to push the new President into authorizing tax credits to stimulate new travel, USTA president-CEO Roger Dow said during a virtual press conference.
Dow said that “Things like tax credits for travel — personal and group — and stimulating travel” would be welcome to help stimulate the stagnant industry, which has suffered greatly in the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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World Tourism Organization calls for vaccine passport
Travel Pulse
The Global Tourism Crisis Committee, at a meeting in Madrid last week organized by the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), is calling for a vaccine passport, saying it must become an essential travel document to help restart international tourism.
“The rollout of vaccines is a step in the right direction, but the restart of tourism cannot wait,” UNWTO secretary-general Zurab Pololikashvili said, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. “Vaccines must be part of a wider, coordinated approach that includes certificates and passes for safe cross-border travel.”
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HVS Market Pulse: Panama City Beach, Florida
HVS
Once an old-school beach destination peppered with mom & pop motels, softened zoning restrictions welcomed high-rise condominium towers in the early 2000s, transforming the area into a collegiate Spring Break haven. The mid-2010s hailed the entrance of a new marketing strategy and the area’s first nationally branded hotels, in addition to legislation prohibiting alcohol consumption on the beaches, once more evolving the market identity to one of a family-friendly destination. It was also during these years that the market bore witness to the housing bubble burst and economic downturn of the Great Recession, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and Hurricane Michael, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020; nevertheless, it persisted.
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An update on PCR testing in Mexico and the Caribbean
Travel Courier
Beach Enclave Turks & Caicos will provide complimentary COVID-19 testing for all guests. These pre-departure tests will take place in the comfort and privacy of each guest’s villa and will be coordinated directly by the concierge team.
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Domestic air tickets igniting travel rebound in some markets
PhocusWire
A six-month outlook for the top ten domestic air travel markets is showing a confidence in consumers to return to the skies — at least in terms of heading to destinations in their own countries.
Data provided by ForwardKeys indicates that in Russia, for example, issued tickets as of January 1 this year for travel within the country are already at 77% of 2020's level.
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SellMyTimeshareNow.com's timeshare resale and rental marketplace produces strong performance in 2020
Resort Trades
SellMyTimeshareNow.com (“SMTN” or the “Company”), the world’s most active online marketplace for timeshares for sale and for rent by owner, celebrates the strength of its timeshare resale and rental platform in the midst of a challenging year for the travel industry. In 2020, the Company drove more than 3.4 million visits to its family of websites, resulting in over 36,700 offers — totaling more than $170 million — to buy or rent timeshares on SellMyTimeshareNow.com. The Company has delivered nearly double the purchase and rental offer value of its next closest competitor’s published offers over the past two years and more than $4.8 billion in offers to buy or rent timeshares advertised on its platform since it was founded in 2003.
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Tips for exiting a timeshare
KNOE
Last year was tough for many people’s finances, so you may be looking to get out of a timeshare agreement you don’t need anymore.
The Better Business Bureau says a Monroe resident called recently to tell them that sellers are calling to try and help you exit your timeshare. But, the BBB says you don’t actually need to use a service to get out of that agreement, you can do it on your own without a dime.
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.RANDOM BITS & NEWS BITES
Watch and wait for investors
Hospitality Insights
Government support for the hotel sector meant that opportunity for investors was slow to come through, according to Questex’s fourth quarterly Investor Sentiment Assessment, in partnership with ABP Invest.
Vaccine-driven hopes of a recovery in the market saw investors return to the core hotel product, after having deviated into serviced apartments in the previous quarter.
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Hotel sales teams: 2020 is behind us but not the pandemic. Now what?
HVS
In Spring 2020, many hotels were forced to furlough most on-property Sales Managers because so much demand for hotels disappeared with the pandemic, requiring any remaining team members to be responsible for market segments which previously were not their responsibility. These remaining Sales Managers were forced to adapt to many other changes in a short time, including rescheduling/canceling events, in addition to learning how to research and sell to new/additional market segments while maintaining relationships with past and current clients. What does this mean for the future sales teams?
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Talking tourism and recovery in Cuba
Travel Courier
Cuban tourism authorities are patiently working at rebuilding their tourism trade and citing the measures the country has taken to safeguard people from coronavirus while doing so.
Cuba joins other countries that have seen the coronavirus pandemic take a heavy toll on their tourism trades and expect that the first six months of 2021 will be slow as international tourism continues to struggle.
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What's ahead for timeshare asset-backed securities?
Resort Trades
How freely will consumers spend in 2021? And what portion of their money will go toward travel and vacations? Those are critical questions to answer when determining the prospects for timeshare loan asset-backed securities (ABS).
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