Instead of spending last winter sunning at Siesta Beach, Fla., or sipping a drink at a downtown rooftop bar, many Canadian snowbirds stayed home, waiting out the pandemic.
But after a year of hibernation, more snowbirds are planning to return to Florida in 2021 – it’s a just a matter of figuring out the best way to get here.
As snowbird season approaches once again, the U.S./Canada border remains closed to non-essential travel. But Canadians are coming anyway. Many say they will fly down if they can’t drive their car across the border, and several plan to have their cars shipped from Canada for the season.
Wallace Weylie, legal counsel for the Canadian Snowbird Association, said there seems to be a lot of pent-up demand from regular snowbirds to return to a warmer climate.
“The sentiment is that they’re not going to spend another winter in Canada,” he said.
The first year of COVID-19 saw a lot of Canadian snowbirds deciding to stay home, Stephen Fine, president and managing editor of Snowbird Advisor, an online publication for Canadian snowbirds, said. A survey conducted by Snowbird Advisor last year found that only about 30 percent of snowbirds returned to their usual sunny destinations for the 2021 season.
Click here to see the full report from Laura Finaldi in the Sarasota, Fla., Herald Tribune.
