“We were leery of going”: qualitatively exploring Canadian international retirement migrants’ travel-related decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic

TL;DR

This study explores how Canadian retirees decided whether to travel to the US for winter during the pandemic, highlighting factors like health risks and travel restrictions.

Contribution

The paper introduces a qualitative analysis of decision-making factors for Canadian retirees during the pandemic, focusing on health risks and travel disruptions.

Findings

Canadian retirees considered public health measures and high case counts when deciding to travel during the pandemic.

Travel health insurance limitations and property maintenance costs influenced their travel decisions.

Social activity limitations and travel restrictions disincentivized international retirement migration during the pandemic.

Abstract

International retirement migration, which is the seasonal or permanent relocation of older people to another country, has grown in popularity in recent years. These retirees are motivated by the promise of warmer winter climates that are conducive to participating in health-promoting recreational and social activities. Ease of cross-border travel facilitates this transnational practice when undertaken seasonally. However, border closures and other travel-related measures put in place to manage the spread of COVID-19, disrupted travel, including for older Canadians who typically winter in the United States (US). During the 2020-21 winter season, for example, Canadians were advised not to engage in non-essential international travel and the land border between Canada and the US was closed to all but essential travellers. Nonetheless, retirement migration remained a significant draw for many Canadian retirees. Here, we qualitatively explore the factors that Canadian international retirement migrants considered when deciding whether or not to travel to the US for the 2020-21 winter during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guided by case study methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 Canadian international retirement migrants who had wintered in the US prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and were in the US at the outset of the pandemic in late winter 2020. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed to decipher what factors were most important to their travel-related decision-making during the pandemic. We structure the thematic results around four factors previously identified to motivate older people to become international retirement migrants and thus inform decision-making: the destination, the people, the cost, and the movement.

The previously identified factors that motivate older people to participate in international retirement migration include: the destination (e.g., climate and amenities), the people (e.g., social networks), the cost (e.g., health insurance and living costs), and the movement (e.g., ease of travel). These factors informed how international retirement migrants made decisions to travel abroad or not in the 2020-21 winter season. For example, destination-based factors included a lack of public health measures and high case counts, people-based factors comprised of less opportunities to engage in social activities, cost-based factors involved maintaining property investments and the lack of COVID-19 treatment coverage in available travel health insurance plans, and movement-based factors included challenges in ease of access when travel was viewed as essential or non-essential. These factors disincentivized or motivated international retirement migrants to travel abroad in the 2020-21 winter season during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results of this study support the need to create tailored decision-support tools for international retirement migrants to make informed travel-related decisions during crisis events so as to protect their health and wellbeing. More research is needed to explore perceptions of risk, especially health risks, among international retirement migrants and how they differently affect their travel-related decisions.