Burlington retailers eagerly await the return of Canadian tourists.
“Canadian tourists are incredibly important,” said Mike Donohue, one of the Outdoor Gear Exchange’s 18 employee owners, as he spoke to VTDigger inside the sprawling store on Church Street in Burlington. “With the Canadian border being so closed, we’re just excited to see it open back up. We have customers who have been coming for years from Montreal and Quebec City.”
“We love having the Canadians here,” said Lara Heath Allen, who owns Ecco, a clothing boutique. “It’s always been a very big part of our business.”
But even without visitors from beyond the northern border, Burlington’s Church Street is packed with visitors filling the outside tables at restaurants, and retailers tell VTDigger business is better than before the pandemic.
“Business has been good,” Donohue said — so good that it has recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
“We’re feeling it’s pretty similar to 2019,” Donohue said. “We are doing that without Canadian tourists.”
The land border between the United States and Canada has been closed to nonessential travel since March 2020. Current restrictions are in place until at least Wednesday, when both countries will decide whether to lift or extend those restrictions.
The Canadian government has said it would not open the border until at least 75% of Canadians have been fully vaccinated. As of Thursday, only 35% of Canadians were fully vaccinated.
While the land border has been closed, the Outdoor Gear Exchange has benefited from the fact that Americans want to be outside more.
“We’re lucky that through the pandemic, people had some clarity in what was important in life, and time outside is one of the things you could do, and people either had that desire and expanded on it, or picked up new sports like hiking or biking, nature watching,” said Donohue.
Many people who ran on treadmills, for example, started running outside, and eventually they needed warmer clothing or headlamps to keep up the routine. Gear related to camping, biking, paddling, skiing and other snow sports also flew off the shelves.
Another reason business is so good, said Dononue: more impulse buying impelled by shortages, which is “encouraging customers to shop around less.”
“If we have a bike that’s in the size someone is looking for and a general spec of if they want a cross-country bike or all-mountain bike or a gravel bike and it’s in their hands, there’s a strong reason to buy,” he said, “because if we needed to special-order it could be three months to a year before that exact model could come back into stock.”
The booming sales are welcome to businesses that suffered so much during the pandemic.
Heath Allen, of Ecco, said she had only two months in 2020 when her boutique did “decent” business. From March to May, when the store was closed, she did no business, and after that, she had about half the business she normally does. Much of her business depends on people needing clothes for special occasions, she said.
“There wasn’t a lot of that going on anyway,” Heath Allen said.
That all changed in the last two months.
“We’re definitely incredibly busy,” said Heath Allen, who opened her store on College Street in 1992 and later moved it to Church Street. “Actually never been so busy.”
Heath Allen said it appears many customers are visiting, looking at schools, but also, the return of events and occasions has brought about a resurgence of demand among local customers for clothes to dress up in.
Alexis Pomerleau, who owns Jess Boutique, said the business enjoys “consistent, loyal Canadian customers” who she has missed over the last year and a half.
Still, she was able to keep her business consistent during the pandemic by hosting Instagram live sales. Dress sales have been booming.
“It’s wonderful that people are able to have events again,” Pomerleau said. “They’re coming in to get dressed up, and we’re seeing all of our loyal customers. We’re seeing a lot of new customers who moved into Vermont during the pandemic and people who are just ready to get out and shop and haven’t been down to Church Street in a long time.”
Heath Allen is looking forward to crossing the border herself to visit Montreal, a city she has missed.
“Love to see the shops,” said Heath Allen. “Love the restaurants, the whole vibe, the museums, the culture. It’s so nice to have a really big city within an hour-and-a-half.”
Some Canada business
A few Canadian tourists have found their way to Church Street.
Paul-Andre Menard and Lise Dasylva live in the Laurentides, in Quebec. For the last 18 years, they came every year because they have a sailboat docked in Plattsburgh, New York. Every year until last year, that is.
They spoke to VTDigger in French.
Since the land border remains closed, they decided to charter a flight from Saint Hubert, Quebec, to Plattsburgh.
“It’s a 15-minute flight,” Dasylva said.
They had their vehicle shipped so that they could use it in the U.S. It was waiting for them when they got off the plane in Plattsburgh.
“It’s a good thing we came to see our sailboat,” Dasylva said. “It was full of swallows’ nests and droppings. It was deteriorating. It’s been 19 months that we have not been able to see our sailboat.”
They are living on their boat and plan to stay in the U.S. for the entire summer. They don’t expect the land border to reopen on July 21, but think that for “health [and] also electoral reasons,” it may open a month later.
“It’s highly probable we will have federal elections in Canada this fall,” Menard said. “[Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau got his knuckles rapped a bit at the beginning of the pandemic because they were late in closing the borders. They want to reopen the borders to please the snowbirds,” he said, referring to Canadians who winter in Florida.
“If the borders reopen July 21,” Menard said, “you will see a lot of Quebec pleasure boaters on the lake. They’ll tell themselves they can navigate for the end of July, all of August, and a part of September.”