Itching to travel? Find flights from Hamilton to tropics for $220

Travel-starved Hamiltonians will have plenty of flight options to sun destinations in the coming months - including some for as low as $220.

Swoop announced Thursday it will begin to rollout a fleet of tropic-bound flights out of John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport next fall.

From early October 2021 to April 2022, the low-fare carrier will offer flights to Cancun and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and Montego Bay in Jamaica.

The one-way flights, running triweekly or weekly, range from just $220 to $250.

Consumer confidence is coming back, and the message is clear, Canadians are ready to start planning that long overdue trip," said Charles Duncan, president of Swoop, in a release.

The announcement comes three weeks after Sunwing opened booking for several local flights to beach resort cities in countries such Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

A boost in scheduled international flights - coupled with consumers waiting months for travel restriction to loosen - spells for a busy tourism season across Canada, said Kevin Bryan, an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

As soon as the government allows it, it's off to the races," he said in an interview.

Examples of rampant traveller excitement have already been seen in the U.S., where domestic and leisure travel is not even close to normal," said Bryan. In Hawaii, they have effectively run out of rental cars."

Air Canada and WestJet are offering one-way flights between Toronto and Vancouver for as low as $114 and, later this summer, between Vancouver and Seattle for less than $200.

But don't expect outrageously low" prices to continue, Bryan said. Airlines are often quick to change flight rates in a bid to beef up consumer demands.

They're not cheap because there's a lot of demand; they're cheap because there's not a lot of demand," he said.

Once they have a plane on the schedule, they're going to want to fill as many seats as they can. And the only way to do that now, with the border restrictions, is to make them inexpensive. But eventually they will come back to normal as more people travel."

Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com