While many couples have holed up during the pandemic baking bread and binging The Tiger King, single Canadians have been navigating a completely different dating environment than anything before.

Some dating companies say the field has significantly changed over the past 21 months and most of the trends are likely here to stay.

“I wasn’t sure initially what would happen with the industry when COVID first hit but we’ve seen a boom of people putting a focus on finding a partner and a meaningful long-term relationship,” said Emily Lyons, founder and CEO of Lyons Elite.

“There’s a lot more intention with dating, for the most part there’s a lot less hookups and flings since it takes more work to plan a date and make sure it’s safe.”

Lyons said her Toronto-based matchmaking service has seen a surge of people looking to date virtually before deciding to take things to the next level: actually meeting each other face-to-face.

“Its gone backwards, people want to meet less connections in-person. They usually have a few FaceTime dates first to see if there’s anything there before deciding whether or not to go forward with a physical date,” Lyons said.

Some dating apps have started offering different features to capitalize on singles who want to focus on the quality of their connections, not the quantity. 

Match introduced a 50-member matchmaking team in November that picks out possible connections for users based on their personality.

“Singles today don’t want to recreationally date or sift through profiles, they want to get great matches and get out on great dates,” Dushyant Saraph, chief product officer at Match, said in an email.

“We created Expert Picks because we realize technology can’t solve everything when it comes to love – at least not yet. Incorporating a human touch into the matching experience on our app improves compatibility and fit.”

Match isn’t the only company that’s placing the focus on a user’s personality over pictures.

Canadian entrepreneur Amy Ge saw an opportunity to launch her own business during the pandemic when she started seeing dating apps become more normalized but she wanted an experience that wasn’t based on looks.

“We created a dating app that was less about profiles and a more slowed down version of dating that wasn’t a Tinder or Bumble,” the 26-year-old Heartcade founder said.

“We’ve been really starved of creating genuine relationships over the past few years and people are looking to dating apps for human connection again but they want to focus more on personality more than ever before.”

Heartcade is an online blind dating app that looks like an 80s video game.

Users can’t see each other until they’ve talked for two days and at the end both people have the option to choose whether or not they want to reveal their full profile and continue chatting. The app is currently in Beta testing in Canada and Los Angeles.

Ge said the main dating trend that she thinks will last post-COVID is Canadians being more upfront with their personal boundaries.

“I think what the pandemic has done is give people the ability to talk about consent and boundaries more,” Ge explained.

“It can be a hard conversation to have on an app but because of COVID we’re more open to having that conversation and that goes beyond vaccines or wearing a mask during a date, it counts for personal beliefs too.”

Vaccine status continue to be a big issue for most Canadians across the country.

A survey by Leger-ACS shows 75 per cent of the country’s total population is fully vaccinated and of those people 57 per cent said they wouldn’t invite an unvaccinated person into their home.

British Columbia comes in at the top of the list with 70 per cent of respondents unwilling to be around an unvaccinated individual.

Lyons said the most important thing when it comes to dating in a time of vaccine statuses is to be honest and explain your point of view right off the bat.

“Just be transparent, if you’re not vaccinated let them know and why. Unfortunately for many vaccinated daters they immediately think this person must be a flat earther but let them know why you’re not, whether it’s because of an allergy or belief,” Lyons said.

“If you have deal breakers you should always be upfront with them, apparently dating wasn’t hard enough before the pandemic so we just had to throw vaccination status in there too!”