Canadians cut their US travel by a quarter last year. They're not rushing back.

Canadians cut US travel by a quarter last year, per Statistics Canada. The number of Canadians returning home from US trips fell 25.4% in 2025, Statistics Canada said. Flight Center says US leisure bookings are improving, but July bookings remained 39% below 2024. The slump comes as the US-Canada trade war escalates again. Canadians won't stop giving US trips the cold shoulder. According to Statistics Canada's National Travel Survey released Tuesday, Canadian residents took 5.5 million trips that included a visit to the US in the first three months of 2026, down 10.6% from the same period last year. The figures extend a sharp pullback that began last year. A Statistics Canada report released last month said that the number of Canadian residents returning home from trips to the US fell 25.4% in 2025 compared with 2024. It was the deepest and most sustained non-pandemic decline on record: 11 straight months of year-over-year falls. Border crossings in early 2026 remained around late-2025 levels, which Statistics Canada said pointed to a "persistent shift" away from the US. The pullback began after President Donald Trump imposed broad tariffs on Canada and Mexico in early 2025, prompting calls for Canadians to boycott US goods and vacations. Now, the trade dispute has flared up again. US-Canada trade talks broke down last week, and fresh 50% US tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian imports took effect on Saturday. Canada has said it will retaliate dollar for dollar from September 8, and on Tuesday announced a series of targeted tariffs on 700 US products, from steel and aluminum to all types of fresh and frozen fish. That retaliation came in response to Trump's announcement on Monday that tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts, and steel would rise to 50% from January 1, 2027. Rachel J.C. Fu, chair and professor in the University of Florida's Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management and director of its Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute, said the renewed tensions could make a rapid recovery less likely. "The 2025 numbers suggest that we are looking at more than a temporary reaction to one political announcement or one round of tariffs," she said. "We are seeing evidence of a broader change in Canadian travel sentiment and, potentially, travel habits." Canadians found other places to go Flight Center Travel Group Canada's data show that US leisure bookings have improved from last year's lows, but remain below their pre-pullback levels. New US leisure bookings made from January through August for travel this year were down 7.4% from the same period in 2025, while turnover slipped 1%, Flight Center said. July bookings rose 5.7% from July 2025 but remained 39% below July 2024 levels. "We're seeing improvement from the lows of 2025, but clearing a very weak 2025 bar is not the same as returning to previous travel patterns," Amra Durakovic, Flight Center Travel Group Canada's head of communications, told Business Insider. Fu said the real risk for US destinations is that Canadians may have developed new vacation habits. "Once travelers establish new vacation patterns, destinations have to compete to win them back," she said. Domestic travel rose by 5 million visits in 2025, while overseas trips increased by 1.3 million, Statistics Canada said, with visits to Europe rising 13.6%, while visits to Asia climbed 16.7% last year. Economic fallout for the US The shift could carry an outsize cost for US tourism businesses. Leisure trips to the US fell by 21.5% in 2025, or by 3.2 million visits, Statistics Canada said. Canadian spending on US trips fell by $3.3 billion, to $18.8 billion in 2025. Leisure-travel spending fell by $2.2 billion, to $12.1 billion, accounting for most of the overall decline. "Many redirected their travel spending elsewhere," Fu said. "This is not simply lost demand; it is demand being captured by competing destinations." The effects could be felt most acutely in border communities and warm-weather destinations that depend on Canadian holidaymakers, she said. Those visitors support hotels, restaurants, attractions, retailers, rental-car companies, airlines, golf courses, and cruise businesses. Leisure matters especially because Canadians traveling abroad primarily for holidays spent nearly five times as much as those whose main purpose was visiting friends and relatives. Family-related US visits fell 9% in 2025, far less than leisure trips, per Statistics Canada. "In tourism, losing a visitor for one season is a revenue problem," Fu said. "Losing that visitor's habit is a market-share problem." Read the original article on Business Insider

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