Business booming at border booze stop after U.S. opens doors locked by COVID

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This article was published 07/11/2021 (1100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EMERSON — The owner of the Emerson Duty Free Shop could barely contain his excitement Monday morning when he realized just how busy the first day of eased border restrictions would be.

As of 9 a.m., just a few hours after the store opened, it had been the busiest day in 20 months.

“This morning I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go, with snowbirds and even with people who’d be going down for a 24-48 (hour trip),” owner Simon Resch told the Free Press.

“But we were backed up from around 5:30 this morning…. It was huge, that was amazing.”

Traffic on the strip of pavement separating the neighbouring countries fluctuated from a steady flow of vehicles to bumper-to-bumper throughout the morning as restrictions preventing non-essential travel across the border by Canadians — imposed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — were relaxed at midnight by the United States.

But there’s a costly catch: Canadian travellers returning home must have, along with proof of vaccination, proof of a negative test taken within 72 hours of their return. A typical duty-free customer passing through, Resch said, is a family of four from Winnipeg planning a two-day trip to Grand Forks to do some shopping. To add hundreds of dollars in fees for rapid PCR tests would naturally disincentivize leisure travel.

“The requirement to have a negative PCR test on the way home really does kill that sort of leisure-travel bug, it really does kill it,” he said.

Commercial drivers aren’t required to provide proof of a negative test.

Resch hopes the country moves away from costly, time-consuming PCR test requirements and eventually kills the testing requirement altogether while still keeping public safety at the forefront of decision-making. While business at the Duty Free Shop, a family owned operation in business since 1982, isn’t at pre-COVID levels just yet, he’s cautiously optimistic.

“We really are geared toward the leisure traveller — social vices at discount prices,” he said. “The return of that for us is huge; it’s been a really long time coming. We knew it would be dampened with the requirement for the PCR test.”

 

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_