Why do we have to pa in u.s money

[Slightly Stoopid]

I've gotta agree with Kahuna ... Our travel plans this winter ..might also be altered & Yes, I've been going to Ja. (since 89)
Our dollar is just taking a beating .. All those Westjet & Air Canada flights ..might be a little more empty
I don't know about any of my fellow Canucks
..but this one can't afford to pay an extra 32%

[Melody]

I've gotta agree with Kahuna ... Our travel plans this winter ..might also be altered & Yes, I've been going to Ja. (since 89)
Our dollar is just taking a beating .. All those Westjet & Air Canada flights ..might be a little more empty
I don't know about any of my fellow Canucks
..but this one can't afford to pay an extra 32%

And the talk of lower airfares....haven't seen that. Westjet came out with 20% off for reward members yesterday. It's still $50-$75 more, each way, than the "jump on" price I'm looking for.

[Jerms]

I got a nice email from westjet a few weeks back telling me that my formerly direct flights now have to connect because they no longer offer direct from Winnipeg. With the sargassum issues in the rest of the Caribbean, I can't see them not offering direct for very long. Still, not the most pleasant news. However, they offered $300 I credit for each of us, and if they're now offering 20% off for rewards members maybe I can request a little more?

[Bnewb]

Better move fast Kahuna the CDN $ has dropped vs Euro€ about 15 cents since April!

Cancelled my Euro trip because of this...it's still waaay cheaper to travel to Jamaica thankfully.

Hopefully Canada will get this resolved soon...we've all been dealing with the Canadian dollar fluctuations forever...it's an aspect of life...I choose to find ways to be more creative with the spending when the dollar sucks as obviously these fluctuations aren't going to stop in my lifetime. One global currency anyone?

[CosmicMoose]

When my flights got changed from PHL > Cozumel direct to a connection thru Charlotte, I got nothing in the way of remuneration from US Air. No money, no miles, nothing.

[Rob]

I think JRob's point is valid. It costs a fee to convert currency. Someone who has already paid a fee to convert to JA will pay another fee to convert that JA to U.S.. That being the case it makes sense to have some US currency to use at those locations that insist on charging in US dollars.

It is illegal for any Jamaican business to "insist on charging in US dollars." They MUST accept Jamaican dollars. As a convenience, they can accept other currencies, but they can in no way insist on charging in US dollars.

The reason some businesses use US$ prices is that the US$ is currently the most stable currency. As Mangogirl pointed out, if they had their prices in CND$ they would have to change it daily (probably a slight exaggeration, but it does make the point). Same is true for the Jamaican dollar. The JA$ fluctuates to the point that prices would need to be changed too often for most businesses. I am sure that frequent visitors have seen menus in the smaller places that have chalk board prices or printed menus with the prices taped over with the new prices. Their menus are often printed with no prices and the prices are just "taped" in....

[dash]

This is insane. The world runs on the American dollar standard. Oil prices commodities almost everything. I just paid for my Vietnamese Phu Quoc bungalow in Canadian dollars that were processed based on American dollars and reimbursed to the hotel in Vietnamese Dong. You can pay in almost any currency that you like but for similar products (hotels) in the same country (Jamaica) there is no advantage to paying the devalued Canadian currency, or European Euro. There will be fewer Canadians travelling, period, due to the low Canadian dollar, worldwide. Just as there are fewer Russians travelling after the fall of the Ruble. Interestingly flights to Jamaica are running 95% full. In the summer!

[Craig123]

It is illegal for any Jamaican business to "insist on charging in US dollars." They MUST accept Jamaican dollars. As a convenience, they can accept other currencies, but they can in no way insist on charging in US dollars.

That's very true Rob and thanks for pointing that out. What I should have said was they insist on PRICING in US dollars. My point is that another "conversion" will happen when changing the US price to a JA price. You can bet the tourist will come out on the short end of that "conversion" every single time.

[Crusher]

I got a nice email from westjet a few weeks back telling me that my formerly direct flights now have to connect because they no longer offer direct from Winnipeg. With the sargassum issues in the rest of the Caribbean, I can't see them not offering direct for very long. Still, not the most pleasant news. However, they offered $300 I credit for each of us, and if they're now offering 20% off for rewards members maybe I can request a little more?

That's weird as they are still offering those options on their website on Saturdays?

[Crusher]

The only way for this to improve in Canada is by increasing the main lending rate and for oil prices to improve. Both of which will cost Canadians more money than the extra costs for travel we are experiencing. We made the decision to not have a summer vacation as we usually would do a weekend in Vegas and concentrate on getting our funds together for Negril. There really is no other place I would rather be in January. So we are going to suck it up, wait until sometime in mid September to start looking at flights(that's when they went down last year) and hope we catch a break on the flights. If not we will take our medicine and eat more in the room.