Summer months are normally the busiest for most of Canada’s border town businesses, but duty-free stores are facing a “severe” economic decline compared to pre-pandemic levels, a new report from the Frontier Duty Free Association (FDFA) released Thursday, shows.
Average sales decreases have floated around 45 per cent for July 2022, the report, released Friday, said. “These export stores were shuttered for nearly two years and were down over 95 per cent in sales during the full closure of the land border for over 18 months,” it added.
“The summer season usually means busloads of people, lineups of people coming over the border and we’re just not seeing the traffic,” Barbara Barrett, executive director of the FDFA, told Global News. “It just means that people…
