Canada instituted a mandatory three-night hotel quarantine for all arriving air passengers from last week (read more here) at select hotels (read more here). Simultaneously, some Canadians found out that it was cheaper to skip the hotel quarantine by paying a fine (read more here).
You must make and pay for three nights while waiting for the Covid-19 results from the test administered at the airport. The results come in a day, and if negative, you are free to leave and continue the 14-day quarantine at your residence.
You can access Canada Government’s page for Covid-19 travel restrictions here.
Crowne Plaza Toronto Airport for C$3,458 for a night – excerpt from the CTV News:
“We told the Crowne Plaza the situation and that we needed to book a hotel,” Teixeira said. “The guy said the rate would be $369 per night and you have to book a minimum of three nights.”
Teixeria said they booked a room with two queen beds and waited more than a hour for a shuttle to arrive. When it didn’t arrive, they were eventually told to take a taxi to the hotel.
“When we got there to check-in all of a sudden our price went up from $369 per night to $769 per night plus tax,” she said. “They knew there were three of us. They didn’t give us the right information.”
With all taxes and additional fees included, Teixeira’s credit card was charged $3,458 to stay in the hotel between Feb. 27 and March 1, which is slightly lower than the $3,945 they were quoted when they first arrived at the hotel.
Not long after that, they received their negative COVID-19 test result, which means they can leave the hotel and complete their quarantine period at home. They spent 15 hours at the hotel.
Don’t expect gourmet meals or even utensils! – Excerpt from the CTV News:
Arunthia Urmi, who stayed at a Holiday Inn in Toronto, told CTV News she wasn’t given any utensils with her late dinner and was running out of bottled water.
“I was so hungry. I called so many times,” she said, recalling her attempts to get more water from staff. “They said, ‘we can only give with meals, dinner and lunch, one bottle [each]. Other than that, you drink from the tap.’”
Jordan Evans, who flew in from Arkansas to be with her partner in Montreal, said at her quarantine hotel, she was given extra bottled water after waiting for more than six hours.
“[My supper] was cold. It was not what I ordered and they didn’t put a beverage in there. So I didn’t have a drink,” she told CTV News in a video interview, adding that her breakfast was only two small drinks, a yogurt cup and two pieces of bread.
Conclusion
It is rather crazy that you must pay for three nights for a hotel while waiting for the Covid-19 results that will come in a day, and you are then free to continue the quarantine at your home.
Hotels must love this arrangement, and the number of participating properties has skyrocketed, per the government’s website. You get ridiculous payment per night per guest even if they stay in the same room for three nights, and most will leave in less than a day.
These hotels usually go for $100 per night, and now they charge $300 or so per person per night. This is nothing but price gouging.
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Whether it’s price gouging depends upon whether they are taking regular customers along with quarantine passengers.
They are, however hotels have to close off and dedicate specific zones, entrances and floors to quarantine passengers.
SOCIALISM…TRUDOPE troops must be having hourly wetdreams…
Not sure what socialism has to do with anything.
Regardless, there’s a good chance he’ll be out of office before the end of the year (O’Toole has a nice office for him). Canada now has more debt per capita than Greece now thanks to his spending spree.
I question whether he actually wants to press with the great reset seeing that anything he touches ends up as a massive failure because of utter incompetence and a lack of understanding which leads to all his acts and laws having more holes than a piece of gruyere cheese.
This practice is TOTALLY BS and non-essential! If you drive from Buffalo you don’t have to spend the $3500??? Book all your flights to Buffalo and rent a car… SOCIALISM!! Grrr…
You cannot drop off a car in Canada so that only works if you plan on returning the car to the U.S.
Certain rental companies offer it, but with a huge fee.
Do you know which ones are still offering it because I don’t see anything available. They used to – but it seems to have ended awhile ago.
National/Enterprise offer it and honestly it’s not that expensive as a one-way rental, $150-250 for 24 hour rental.
You do risk a CBSA officer rejecting your quarantine plan based on the fact that you’d need to drop off the car rental then go home, rather than going directly home.
Can you Uber from BUF to the Rainbow Bridge for around $40, walk across the bridge and have someone pick you up on the Canadian side?
Nothing blocking you from walking across Rainbow Bridge or any other border (of course some are more remote than others).
I don’t see this being different than getting off of an airplane. As long as you take a taxi home from the car rental, not public transport.
The key is you’re supposed to go directly from the point of entry to your home without stopping anywhere. Returning the car to a car rental facility probably means putting gas in the car (not allowed) and other interactions. The latest guidelines at airports are that a parked car should be at the airport parking lot rather than off-site.
The federal guidelines aren’t very clear and a CBSA agent on a power trip could very well refuse the quarantine plan based on this. I’d hate to end up not being able to return a rental car because I was unlucky at the border.
A power trip? How could you suggest such a thing? Judge Dred is just your local, friendly cop on the beat dressed up to look scary!
CBSA agents are fully empowered to reject a quarantine plan that they deem is not suitable and send you to detention in a federal location or designated hotel (one positive point – they are free).
That doesn’t make sense. Even if you go straight home from the border in your own car, you need to put gas in if the tank is empty. Putting gas in doesn’t mean you have to be in direct contact with people. Same at the rental office: plenty of places offer a key dropbox and you’ll be done with it.
Key is – if you’ve arrived from abroad you’re asked and required to avoid as much contact as possible (ideally none). The federal guidelines actually specifically guide travellers to not stop on their way back from the airport/border – be it at a gas station, supermarket, etc.
No, I haven’t rented one in a few years. COVID might be playing a role too.
Unless you’re moxing to or from Canada, you will eventually fly in the other direction aswell. So you can return the car yourself. Even if the rental cost the same as the quarantine hotel, at least you didn’t get ripped off 🙂
I meant “moving” not “moxing”
I don’t need a vehicle while I’m in Toronto, so there’s no point paying for a vehicle for a month and then having to drive back to BUF. I can fly back to the U.S. from YYZ. Note how the U.S. rules on testing for re-entry make more sense. Time frame is 3 days instead of 72 hours like Canada. If you are even one hour past 72 hours, that warrants being fined $3,000 or being hauled away to a federal facility?
For $3500… Think outside the box my friend… Cab it or whatever… $3500 is for them… Yours can be WORST…
Land-border crossings are in process of being further scrutinized too, so rules may change soon.
Bottom line is: don’t go vacationing out of the country. Shouldn’t be that hard to understand.
I along with many others are not vacationing. People have different reasons for traveling. Many families live on both sides of the border. And having to provide 2 negative tests make you far safer than someone going to big box stores. It’s simply politics to divert attention from the Canadian government failure on getting the population vaccinated.
My family is across the Atlantic, I didn’t go see them either. Even when my grandmother died, I watched the funeral remotely at 6 AM my local time.
I agree that the people travelling under strict rules and quarantining at home, like they should, are suffering under the amount of people who flee the country to go party down south where there are little to no sanitary measures and (on top of it all) disregard any quarantine requirements. The government measures are merely a symptom of how society behaves. If we would’ve been wise, like the people in New Zealand (among other examples), we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Influencers are some of the main culprits here. Trying to show a perfect party life, unsocially distanced and maskless life, in Miami or Mexico. I suppose it’s easier to show off plastic tits by the water in February in Miami than in Hamilton.
Worse thing is this year’s winter was very mild and pretty short. Canada is now trying to pretend a zero covid policy which is an impossible goal because it’s just too late now.
Big box stores aren’t the worse.
Truckers are free to cross the border as many times as they wish in a week. They can then do as they please on either side of the border.
My local police department do their rounds without wear masks (luckily the fire department do).
Flight attendants/Pilots can visit places where variants are circulating abroad and are exempt from quarantining (including hotels) upon their return. Heck they might be at your local Costco an hour after they land.
It’s of course a lot easier to pick on the Indian immigrant, a German returning from a funeral abroad than 98% of the people who cross the border on a daily basis and many of whom aren’t even tested. The media treat people arriving from abroad as criminals (and I agree those returning from the sun should be shamed), but many don’t fall in that category and are being unjustifiably bullied upon with the only justification serving to increase Trudeau’s ratings and serve as smoke and mirrors for the vaccination delays here.
I can assure you that flight crews are not walking around in your local Costco. They are forced to quarantine too (just not 14 days, but until they fly out again.)
Police get away with it because no one polices the police. Truckers will see testing at the border coming too. The German shouldn’t attend a funeral abroad, but if he really wants to, he’ll need to suck up the quarantine. Same for the immigrant, a three-day hotel stay is nothing compared to the cost of immigration and moving across the globe. Plus, they always have the option to reschedule the move to later in the year.
I’m not saying GO, but some people and snowbirds and other Canadians are CAUGHT in that Illegal TRAP outside the country… Some left 4 months ago before this rule and don’t event OWN $3000!!! Yes for some regulations but grandfather the ones who left before!!! 8 weeks ago they were talking about giving back $1000 for each traveler when they came back and 3 weeks later hit them on the head because they are not in Canada morning and paying taxes on booze and gas and Canabis!!! Haters want to make them pay it seems!!! Just saying!
I guess that the point is that why one needs to pay for THREE NIGHTS of quarantine at a hotel when you get the results and get out after a night if negative?
The room needs to be reserved. Hotels can’t just presume the test will come in after 24h, otherwise they may get stuck with travellers that don’t have their reserved room available.
The snowbirds knew very well there was a pandemic going on and that governments may change procedures at the border to increase safety, they decided to travel nonetheless. There is no “trap” and it’s certainly not “illegal.”
I don’t have $3000 at hand either, but then again: I’m travelling. Plus: there were plenty of warnings that this was coming, so travellers had plenty of chances to re-schedule their return.
Rent a Uhaul Van… Problem solved.
Yes, it’s pricey, but most hotels actually closed their kitchens/restaurants because it wasn’t worth it with the current sanitary measures and reduced (read: nearly non-existing) clientele. Some of the few open full-service hotels I asked (out of general interest) would only offer room service for certain meals on weekends (breakfast and dinner) leaving patrons to take care of their food on their own during the week.
So, while these hotels are having limited clientele, they can’t ask quarantined guests to go out and get their own meals. The higher room rate must be to drive the cost of the kitchen and room service to be stand-by for meals three times a day, without turning a loss. But that’s simply an educated guess.
The government has been pleading with Canadians not to cross the border to the US or any international travel. Notice of the quarantine was provided well in advance. If you choose to exit the country, it’s at your own risk, and don’t be expecting any sympathy.
It’s not really price gauging, there are a lot of rules that are imposed on the approved hotels that make running this expensive and complicated.
First you need to have a separate entrance for int’l guests and local guests (so additional FD staff), add security staff, tracking guests, catering, extra cleaning, keeping a room out of inventory after check out, transport, PCR test that is part of the rate. It all adds up and essentially it’s a $200 premium compared to a bare bones nightly rate.
A couple can book a room for about $1200 for 3 nights which isn’t all too bad. Some hotels allow you to receive a refund for the 2nd/3rd night if you receive your results quickly – but that depends on the hotel policy. I do think the non-refundable rule is tough and could be loosened – some properties are willing to change dates at no cost, not all though.
And from a points perspective, one can choose the hotel where we want to stay and be billed directly by the hotel (earn points + credit card multipliers) which is a lot better than other countries (say the UK where you don’t even know until 24 hours prior to arrival where you will be lodged). That said, I’d obviously prefer to quarantine 14 days at home with some sort of electronic tracking rather than go to a hotel and leave after 24-72 hours.
Unfortunately, under the current rules, you can’t book your own hotel directly, but you’ll have to call the government-mandated travel agency. They book the hotel for you at a commissionable rate, so not eligible for receiving points/qualification nights at virtually all the hotel loyalty programs that I’ve participated in.
It was mentioned in one of the Canadian press articles that the booking of hotels was outsourced to Amex Global Business Travel and hold-times had been reduced to TWO HOURS. Average booking takes 20 minutes. Why not allow this online? I cannot understand.
When what the government is doing doesn’t make sense to you, you do not understand the real agenda.
It does make perfect sense to me.
Guys, check the Canadian Hotel Quarantine website, the rules changed yesterday. You can book directly, some hotels even have the link to book online others can be done by phoning the property directly.
I can understand that the govt wants to trace the travellers. However, having an on-line booking portal would’ve saved a lot of wasted time (and, probably, long-distance phone charges.)
Based on your down vote to my comment and your repetitive comments, it is clear you do not understand the real agenda.
Everything the Canadian (and every other one also) government is doing makes perfect sense, given the real agenda.
No need for your wackadoodle conspiracy theories.
In today’s age of technology, Amex still has to collect their commission, right? This to purely a punitive measure because making AIR travelers pay for a 3 night hotel stay even if they stay one night does nothing to actually stop transmission of the virus.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/canada/why-mandatory-hotel-quarantine-is-almost-certainly-doing-nothing-to-curb-covid-19/wcm/1929fd40-48ff-430b-871d-2a6d5b0dfca8
How lovely of the Canadians…..maybe they’re not our “friends” after all
Tap water in hotels is safe in Canada
I do agree. Some, however, prefer bottled.
My dad who is 87 years old back home extremely sick. Not sure when I will see him again
I would love to go to visit but I don’t know what I have to do when I’m back, I have a low income 🙂
Too bad and no body knows..
Any body can tell what I have to do?
Your conclusion was wrong. There are no $100 hotel rooms in Canada for as long as I can remember. An ordinary hotel room anywhere in Canada would begin around $150. The $100 hotel pricing of rooms ended with the 20th century. Canada’s economy doubled provincially and nationally in the 20th century, including the hotel industry.
Most of the quarantine hotels actually go for $70-$200, most around the $120 mark since Covid. Many hotels were only selling 5-10 rooms a night whereas prior to Covid they were full.
I’ve seen hotels around the 100$ mark during COVID. Not next to an international airport though.
Yes, I have not stayed in an hotel during covid-19. My last hotel stay was at Best Western over a year ago. I never seen an hotel room for $100, pre-covid.
My last trip to Canda in early January 2020, plenty of hotels for $100 or even a little under.
As I wrote earlier, I have not seen any hotel room price for $100 or less in many years.
You must not get out much then
Have to wear a face mask and other covid-19 problems. Left Shanghai, China on January 31rst, 2020. Only person to not wear a face mask at Shanghai Pudong’s airport. Delta Airlines suspended flights from China about a week later. Flight crews were as annoyed as me about Wuhan, China’s problem.
Hmmm, several here have suggested that the test takes a long time. Except for the scam (C$3,500 indeed), I can’t imagine why Canada would take up to 3 days and (as I understand) Japan has it in 20 minutes.
A CBC journo in Montreal tested the process, landed in YUL early afternoon and got her results later in the evening. She didn’t even spend a night at the hotel.
I don’t get the person whining about wanting more bottled water and being disgruntled at having to drink tap water. Isn’t tap water in Canada very safe?
There are some valid complaints in this article but there are also some ridiculous ones. “Oh no I have to drink tap water” sounds like the ultimate whiny first world problem.
I’ve had both Covid Pfizer shots, and will get a negative test pre-flight. Why should I have to pay to stay in a hotel with (possibly) infected people?
Because 98% of the population in Canada haven’t been vaccinated yet and it’s still not certain whether vaccinated people continue to transmit the virus or not. You could also be vaccinated and bring in a variant against which the vaccinations are less effective.
of course…the super-scary SuperCovid variants only occurred in countries where the “Vaccines” were tested initially – almost exclusively. UK, Brazil, S. Africa, USA….meditate on that.
DRINK FROM THE TAP. It won’t kill you.
Unfortunately, the chlorine does kill the bacteria in your gut (bad for your immune system) and the waste fluoride is not so good for what’s left of your brain.
The plastic bottles, of course, provide BHA (have I got that right?) which is really bad for your liver.
Absolute nonsense about the bottled water. The tap water in PERFECTLY good and SAFE to drink in Canadian cities. I don’t give a rat’s arse if someone ‘prefers’ bottled water…they can grow the F**K up and get it from the tap!
Clearly the federal government is fully cognizant of what’s going on but don’t care.
Canada should just implement ANAL C19 testing for EVERYONE. Human rights aren’t important due to the Covid boogy man. So…just go all the way. Follow China!
You meant annual, huh?
Well, maybe these whiny baby snowflakes SHOULDNT TRAVEL!!! Who do they think they are???? Boo hoo, no bottled water…. OMG, drink water from the tap!!!!!!