OC
[OC] Canadian Visitors to the US vs All Other Countries
Yesterday I created a graphic showing Canadian visitors to the US over time, today I wanted to expand that topic by also showing Canadian visitors to all other countries.
The top graph is raw numbers by week, the bottom graphic is the percentage of US vs non US travelers. I also included total July numbers for every year in the top graphic for reference.
Created with excel. US data is combined automobile crossings and air, all other countries are air only.
Yesterday I created a graphic showing Canadian visitors to the US over time, today I wanted to expand that topic by also showing Canadian visitors to all other countries.
The top graph is raw numbers by week, the bottom graphic is the percentage of US vs non US travelers. I also included total July numbers for every year in the top graphic for reference.
Some trends...
There is a significant drop in US visitors in 2025 vs 2023 & 2024. 1 million less in July 2025 vs 2024. In my opinion, this seems to be a clear result of the current US admin's policies, intentional or not.
There is also a more gradual increase in Canadians visiting All Other Countries, starting "post covid". In my opinion the reasons for this are less clear, but I suspect it is partially due to Canada having an increasing amount of immigrants (1 in 4 people) mostly from India/China, visiting home. This graphic only counts Canadian "residents".
Created with excel. US data is combined automobile crossings and air, all other countries are air only.
it definitely looks like the drop for summer tourism season will be significant, but we need more data to draw any conclusions.
one thing is that it does look like canadians are simply traveling less internationally which may be because any international travel to destinations apart from the US is unaffordable for many Canadians so they just choose to stay in Canada, or it could signal that Canadian's just aren't comfortable with their finances enough to travel anywhere right now.
anecdotally, many of my friends (including ones who live in the US) are trying to boycott US travel lol
Keep in mind travel in Canada is more expensive than in other countries. Air travel is expensive becsuse of little competition. Road travel is expensive within Canada becsuse it’s a big country. That leaves most Canadians travelling south to nearby border cities and they are the ones absolutely the most affected right now, even more than the Las Vegases and Nashvilles in the rest of the country.
The other effect that could explain ‘all other countries’ growth post-pandemic was that we tended to be cash rich and willing to invest in more ambitious travel than a typical year.
No. It's the opposite. Based on the numbers provided, there was a 35% drop in Canadians returning from the US from 2024 to 2025 in July and a 6% increase in returns from all other countries during the same time period. Based on those same numbers, 77% of visits were to the US in July 2024 and only 67% were to the US in July 2025.
The graphic is every tricky to read. Yes, visits to the US are up in July versus January… but that happens every (non-pandemic-affected) year. The more important comparison is versus 12 months earlier. Look at July ‘25 versus July ‘24, for example or May or Mar - it’s way down compared to last year.
You can't compare July to January, No one travels in January because everyone is broke from xmas, and just got back from trips visiting their family. January dips down every year, all the way back to before the pandemic.
The chart is pretty hard to read, but if you look in the middle, It just shows the total numbers for July. It is 2.067 million in 2025, vs 3.186 million in 2024
There wasn't much change in January, but the 51st state stuff didn't start right away, it was a couple months in. If you compare march 2025 to March 2024, most of the bars are 150,000 lower than the previous year.
Also keep in mind that many people already had plans to visit there which could not be changed. If you have plane tickets which are already purchased, you generally cannot change or refund them.
It would be interesting to see this chart again at the end of the year.
The percentage of total travelers graph also follows a similar trend though.
In July of every year, there are more people traveling to the US vs other countries than in January. But if you compare similar months:
Jan 2019, 56% were visiting the US.
Jan 2023, 72% (I think this year was high because of the pandemic maybe)
Jan 2024, 59%
Jan 2025, 60%
July 2019, 85%
July 2023, 81%
July 2024, 79%
July 2025, 69%
Percentage of people visiting the US vs other countries in the months from March to July are definitely down as well. Feb and April of this year were actually the lowest on the entire chart excluding the pandemic. Which makes sense since that was just after the time of the first round of tariffs, and then after the 51st state and annexation talk.
Travel outside of Canada has definitely gone down in general as well though, almost 1 million less people apparently. The US was a very close, nice, safe, easy place to visit for not very much money. Canada is a very big place, and there is a lot to see here, so many people are just traveling inside Canada. Plus, everything everywhere has gotten crazy expensive, so overseas trips aren't as appealing to a lot of people.
This doesn't seem to be reflected in any data. Canadian tourism abroad appears pretty similar for the last 10 years, barring covid times. Internal tourism has also increased while travel abroad is relatively stable, suggesting Canadians are in fact traveling more when combined, not less.
Man, there's nothing funnier than right leaning Canadians pretending that the country is impoverished now, as if there aren't millions of other Canadians on the Internet willing to accurately describe reality.
The drop in US travel is obviously political - this is a data subreddit and there's no drop in inflation adjusted wages that would justify your claim.
I am not sure it's just right-leaning canadians. There's plenty of "tear down the system! Sieze the means of production!" types suggesting similar economic problems, that just aren't true.
To be fair. Canadians are struggling. 60% living paycheck to paycheck. Household debt has increased about 33% in the last 10 years. COL is only getting worse.
This isn’t even political. It’s just facts.
Canadians didn’t need much of a reason to turn that 15k Disney world trip into a 3k trip to Jasper.
Canadian travel service and pre-trip expenditures combined are trending to be $500m less than last year according to the percentages in Q1 being published by StatsCan.
Oh, so you think that Canadians' disposable income for travel has been strong right up until 2025, when it suddenly dropped precipitously, resulting in decreased travel expenditures just coincidentally at exactly the same time the US travel boycott started.
Check out the relative unemployment numbers my guy, particularly in our urban centres. It means what's left of disposable income isn't being "disposed" of. Everyone's knees are knocking as to whether they're going to get laid off or not tomorrow, and the glory days of WFH are gone in an attempt to trigger organic turnover.
Meanwhile the Canadian investing class is piling money into US equities, which is a more serious conversation than travel with regards to future economic impact.
As a Canadian, I can say we are also very pissed at cheeto Hitler fucking us with tarrifs and telling us we should be the 51st state. This is the more likely explanation to the drop in visitors.
Lmao. I was in Japan two months ago and am going to Mexico in a month. I know two people who canceled plans to visit the States - one was going to go to Yosemite with our Californian friend, and decided that she couldn't go, but invited him to Banff instead.
Also, my niece is a recipient of the Make a Wish Foundation. She changed her plans to go to Disneyland because she didn't want to go to the States.
It has nothing to do with not having disposable income. It's all about making purchasing and vacation decisions that reflect one's values.
I actually met a couple yesterday who are visiting from the States. I helped them with the elevator and we got talking. Very nice couple. This is not against Americans. I genuinely really like Americans, and like the couple I met yesterday, every American I meet are such outgoing and kind people.
Rather, it is about the government. I like Americans, I hate the USA government.
I work at a large international airport in a tourist destination city. Our overall passenger numbers usually climb by 6% each year. This year they dropped by 5% for the daily average on the year. Our budgeting is based on that expected growth every year and we see the big wigs and finance folks scrambling to cut the budget because they know it's not a temporary trend. Im curious to see if the state gets anywhere near its normal influx of Canadien snowbirds this year.
The ludicrous consequences of assuming exponential growth ad infinitum. The world population doesn’t grow 6% per year, so how does your airport expect to continue growing like that indefinitely?
Easy. You're a boss. You ask the employees to make more every year or be fired. They, having no choice, turn over every last leaf and cut every last corner to do so. They get normal wage, you get executive wage. When the company eventually dies, they get fired and you get a massive bonus.
Why would an executive care about the long-term health of the company when they could make more money in the short term and then leave?
Deep down, I genuinely believe that a lot of former tycoons and business owners and executives used to care about long-term health because they believed in the future and religion and afterlife and consequences, to some self-absorbed extent. Now that all the executives are nihilists who believe nothing happens when you die, they're taking all the value of the Earth with them to the grave.
I don't think your logic applies in that case. OP didn't suggest a 6% increase was demanded, just that historically the normal trend is a 6% increase. If that's the case surely it isn't unreasonable to cater for that with a seasonal staff and resources increase?
If something unexpected happens and the numbers go down, e.g. covid or an unusually controversial foreign policy, there may not be a quick way to react beforehand.
I'm not saying you don't have a point in general, just that this doesn't seem like a time when it applies. This sounds to me more like a logistics plan based on historical data thrown off by unxpected circumstances.
Also, taking a point someone else made, working out a future, smaller budget to react to market forces does seem like a reasonable long term plan for the company. How many companies can survive paying over the odds for staffing and resources that aren't going to be used, especially if it goes against historical data and may be a long term thing?
It sucks for the staff that aren't needed and the companies that provide the food, drink and other resources that are no longer required. However it seems that the company here is being criticised when it sounds like it's just trying to react reasonably to an unexpectedly volatile political environment.
Canadian travel to the US is down like 30-40% this summer, mostly in response to the 51st state talk. I'm guessing that's disproportionately tourism, since work travel isn't usually discretionary.
This is quite confusing to read when trying to see what the point of the graph is...
It just seems like visitation drops during covid and then returns back to relative normal levels. Frankly, we need to see a couple other years data past this year to get a good explanation of the drop this July year.
Note this data is collected when Canadians return to Canada - if you have a layover in the US on your way somewhere else it would not count, but if you do on your return trip it might.
yeah, i just got stranded by the AC strike and i'm close to the border. not once did i consider crossing over to try to get a better return flight - i'm not submitting myself to us customs for love or money.
Wouldn't you go through customs in Canada? I know that's how it is when flying to the US from Calgary (they have the US customs at the Calgary airport so that you can arrive at a domestic terminal at your destination). I'm pretty sure that's how it works at Vancouver too.
No, that's still Canadian ground operating under Canadian law. It's not like a portion of the airport is a US embassy. This post covers all of the details. The big takeaway is that they are operating under Canadian law first and foremost and they can't simply remove someone from Canada.
If they think someone entering the US is a criminal that they would like to extradite, they'd still have to go through the normal channels that require legal proceedings in Canada.
You don't normally need to go through customs when stopping over at airports, though. I've had stops in S. Korea, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Singapore and didn't pass through customs because I didn't leave the international terminals at the airports.
In every other country that's correct. When I've transited in the US I need to go through customs and get a visa waiver, even though I never left the international terminal.
I don't fly often but the few times I have I noticed that. I thought it was really interesting. The international terminal is like a nowhere zone. You're not technically in the country you're currently standing in and you're sure as hell not in the country you came from anymore. Makes that movie about Tom Hanks getting stuck in a terminal a little more believable. I think it's based on a true story iirc.
It’s different when transiting in the US now. You need to remove your luggage, bring it to be scanned, then exit and go through customs and security etc.
Currently in Europe dealing with the Air Canada strike fallout. I am not sure if I will be able to get home without connecting through the US and I’m trying not to.
But you do need to interact with customs, if you are leaving Canada for the US you need to go through customs in Canadian airport, if you are returning Canada through the US you need to go through the customs first before taking the connection flight.
Because sometimes planes will land at a different terminal and force you out of the international zone even on a layover. It happened to me on a flight from Taipei to Toronto with a connextion in O'hare. Terminal 5 is the ''international'' one, but flights to Canada often leave from terminals 2 (Air Canada) or 1 (United) and you have to leave because 1-3 are a separate building from 5.
I'm flying to Miami in February, then immediately boarding a ship and spending two weeks in the caribbean. Spending as little time in Miami as possible
This doesnt seem to show much or a drop at all, at least visually. I know the July #s are huge, which is saying something considering thats the middle of summer, but overall it seems largely the same. I assume a lot of this is just due to standard cross border traffic and trade that will likely take a long time to shift?
Only about a third of US-Canada travel is for leisure. Business travel (not likely to drop quickly/much) is another third and the balance is visiting friends/family (unlikely to drop quickly), sports/activity (probably fairly sticky), and cruises (which isn't really travel to the US).
Edit: put another way, about a million was leisure travel and that’s dropped twenty percent in July year over year. It’s also the summer, when Canada has decent weather so folks tend to travel less abroad.
Looks like May/June/July 2025 are down about 30% from previous years. That's a lot considering there's always going to be a baseline of necessary travel for business, education, etc. That's tourism industry destroying numbers.
We have to remember too that "visitors to the US" includes but is not exclusive to tourists. Truckers still cross regularly, plus those who go for work. A sharp decline in tourism will only show up if tourists are a significant percentage of visitors.
I don’t think it’s a fair comparison as both countries share the same currency.
I’d love to take my family down the US but when I cost it out at the current exchange rate with the increased cost of goods the past 24 months, it’s insanely expensive.
Like a few EU countries they can say they are commited without ever having to do it, which is likely since Czech crowns are quite popular in Czech Republic.
Canada's largest business partner. Tourism is down more sharply.
It also doesn't account for intranational travel. Most Canadians that forwent a US vacation travel in Canada which wouldn't appear on this graph of international travel.
Yeah, I know that there have been organizations like school groups that didn’t alter their existing plans, but wrapped them up and will choose differently going forward. I think lots of people are following through with existing planned trips but not initiating anything new after that.
Between lodging, airfare, theme parks, excursions, or whatever, there might be some things that they could get a refund on, and some things they can't.
Edit: Also, flights are generally cheaper the earlier you book them. Also, also, many places do give discounts for booking non refundable options.
Also, many people like booking far in advance. I have family looking to book 2 years in advance at the moment.
There are plenty of people who could have booked not only before the Nov 2024 election, but even before he was inaugurated so that includes the rest of Nov, Dec, and most of Jan, so that's only 6 to 8 months.
i work in travel and year over year searches for Canada to US were up +13-19% in the latter half of 2024
once January 2025 hit, it did a complete 180 and has been down -20-30% every month while simultaneously Canada to Canada increased to +20-30% in 2025 months
Canada to Canada and Canada to US have always battled back and forth for most searches every month, but now Canada to Canada outpaces Canada to US almost 2:1. it's certainly a big drop and it's really negatively affecting US tourism
Canadiens are by far the largest non-US travelers to the US and it's hurting every US city a lot
There’s just no way for it to drop THAT much that quickly. I have friends and family in the US. I won’t miss a wedding or funeral of a close loved one for the Rapist in Chief. My job requires travel. If my boss tells me to fly to meet someone in the US, I’m going. I just won’t go there for vacation or for family reunions or other things I might have attended before that aren’t as necessary.
You spend way too much time online if you expected it would be 'trending towards nothing'. Its a minority that is against the States right now and are hardcore about their 'boycott'. Lots of people were pissed off at the beginning but have since softened up and don't care as much. Vast majority of our population lives within a hour or 2 driving of the border, to think that most people would stop going is naive.
It's really more that population-scale statistics like this don't move in intuitive ways, because there's a bunch of actually very important reasons people aren't going to change. You're not going to refuse to visit your dying mother in the US because of Trump. If you're one of the millions of people who needs to travel to the US for work as a central function of your job, you're not going to bankrupt your family to avoid Trump's America.
Dropping a third of travel year-to-year is pretty significant, though. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars per year. That's not like...a tiny handful of people on reddit. That's "pretty much everyone rescheduled their vacations", it's just not "everyone literally refuses to go for any reason".
I think it might be more visually intuitive to graph each month side by side. Like put all the Januaries together, all the Febuaries, etc., with a colour for each year, and you could show a trend line for each year.
Also places that cost much more to visit for Canadians like it's not increased in other countries much but that also means Canadians are holidaying inside Canada instead of visiting the states.
That doesnt explain why theyre going to Europe and not US. Especially considering the Canadian dollar has strengthened against the USD and weakened against the Euro
The idiotic idea of making us the 51st state has pissed off the entire country basically.
Canada and the US have been the two closest nations in history for almost the entirety of our countries existence, sharing the worlds largest undefended border, extreme combined economy, shared defense, etc.
To even suggest that our country should become a state was a fuckin astronomical insult. Imagine how Americans would feel if Mexico ever said something as stupid as that about the US.
To add to what others are saying, I know a lot of Canadians who already had trips planned (hotels, flights, vacation time booked) who still went on their trips to avoid wasting time/money but are looking elsewhere in the future.
Note: in this post "Canadian" means "resident of Canada," not "Canadian citizen."
This may not seem like a huge distinction but Google AI notes about 11% of Canadian citizens live outside Canada. Many if not most of us (I am one) return to Canada with some frequency (all my family lives there so I visit 1-2x a year) but count as visitors.
I'm gonna be honest- as a Canadian, most people I talk to still visit the US as frequently as they used to. It's not about politics- it's about ease of travel
Anecdotal but when I was travelling to the US last week, the transborder terminal at Pearson was super busy, and it was not primarily business travellers, I saw a lot of families too.
To be fair, it seems like travel from the whole world to the US is down, not just from Canada. But yes.
The reason I was saying this is because people are acting like the remaining 70% is only business travel and that barely anyone is going for vacation. Evidently that’s not the case.
Where do you live? In Quebec most people I know would be ashamed to go to the US for other reasons than business. I think business travel is what keeps those numbers up.
I’m so embarrassed to say that my snowbird mom and pops will go to Texas for the winter she begged me to go but I just can’t bring myself to spend my money in TEXAS of all places. I tried to make a case for them not to go but they’re adults and do whatever they want and it’s not about politics for them but they don’t watch the news as much as I do 😂I traveled to Vegas in 2019 but it’s 2025 now and lots of shit has changed since then.
Yeah. I've had friends question whether it's right to go to stuff they've prepaid. I declined to visit family this year. I actually don't know anyone who's booked a leisure trip to the US since January.
I'm sure airports and border crossings seem busy enough, but I have to wonder if they're keeping as many lanes open as they used to.
anyone who does is there because of very specific reasons (weddings, non-refundable vacations, has to for work).
there hasn't been much "impromptu travel" in regards to vacations, many choosing to spend their money in asia or europe instead if they can afford to, or just take a week off and drive to banff/jasper/kalowna.
The data shows that Canadians are visiting the US a lot less frequently than they used to. I think this says more about the people you talk to than anything statistically meaningful.
I wonder if it's regional or other demographics are at play. Anything notable about your situation? The data shows 30% drop and it's probably higher if you take out connecting layovers and unavoidable business. Most people I know in Southern Ontario are avoiding. I'd characterize it as the older, richer, and whiter you are, the more likely you are to support avoidance (able to fly further, memories of other territorial annexations from your homeland?). Any notable ideas why you think the opposite? Are you really close to the border so there's more humanization of the other side?
I'm not finding anyone I know is going to U.S. If they do, it is due to unavoidable business reasons or conferences or flight connections to somewhere else. The business travel isn't reflected in the data and skews the data quite a bit. With prices in U.S. destinations no longer cheap, in my experience, travel to Europe is a much better option with the only real difference being the length of flight. Cross border shopping is also a huge part of Canadians travelling to U.S. travel and and with the tariffs hitting the U.S., there are no cost savings to be had.
The raw data here isn't at all useful without knowing reasons for travel.
That is genuinely disappointing, it should be about politics and they should be avoiding the US in so far as the US keeps threatening to annex us and more importantly we are in a trade war we didn't start.
Well the person you are responding to is more anecdotal than data driven.
You can look at other US data sectors and see there is starting to be a drop in sales/movement/visitors/etc….
Like most macro decisions there is a delay in the economy and data. There is also hidden information such as where Canadians are visiting in America. If most visitors only go to NYC or LA or some business hub and no longer the occasional visit to random flyover states.
It also is only 6 months into the year and some of these trips are pre-planned ahead of time. There is a chance next year sometime the data will show the drop.
This data has a mix of business and personal which I imagine are very different of looked at separately. But with that said this data probably would be nicer to look at if you have years on top of each other to show the amount over a given period since stuff like personal travel I imagine is alot more seasonal.
The only people I know who are boycotting US travel wouldn’t have gone there anyway. I think most people don’t have much choice because they travel either for business or to visit family. Makes sense the numbers are still quite high. That said, fuck the orange clown and keep those elbows up!
Canadians, if you can, please voluntarily boycott travel and products from USA. Pressure needs to be applied from all directions, at all times. Don't even bother with trying to find the "good" states. They need more pressure to get up and do more.
Considering that typically 70% + of travelers tend to be business travel, this implies a much bigger drop in “discretionary” travel right? And if the tariffs hold there’s probably a second drop around the corner once the biz segment is impacted by less business between the two nations
The seasonal patterns here are so clear you can almost feel the snowbird migration! What's really interesting is how the US percentage seems to be declining slightly over time - suggests Canadians are diversifying their travel. I wonder if this correlates with the Canadian dollar's strength periods, or if it's more about new direct flight routes to Europe/Asia. The COVID recovery also seems much faster for "other countries" than US travel - possibly due to different entry requirements or perceived hassles?
So exchange rates were basically the same in 23-24 and in 18-19. Other than the 08 collapse the Canadian dollar has always trended between 70-80 cents US.
Many of these trips were just day trips across the border. I know a lot of people that have cancelled their US vacations and/or don't cross border shop anymore.
For me, I fly around the US to the Caribbean. Other friends went to Europe. I have an Oz trip coming next year.
Yeah, I can't just drive to a vacation if I stay out of the US, but I don't get sent to any gulags because some anal pore doesn't like my Bluesky posts either.
Mostly domestic or no vacation at all. The "Other" locations barely increased yr/yr. Probably due to their own economic struggles and political turmoil.
Any Canadian with moral fiber has been boycotting the US since the clown was re-elected and made it clear that America is not our friend. Everything US related in Canada has dropped significantly since late last year, whether an intentional consumer choice or a consequence of US policy
No they're not. Every spike on The top chart is from July/August which average around 700-800K per week. 2025 July numbers are around 400-500k/week, a significant decrease.
Wait till the winter when snow bird travel to USA.
Also, working canadians are broke, don't have disposable income. I know boomers are exempt from the category
167
u/TA-MajestyPalm 6d ago
Yesterday I created a graphic showing Canadian visitors to the US over time, today I wanted to expand that topic by also showing Canadian visitors to all other countries.
The top graph is raw numbers by week, the bottom graphic is the percentage of US vs non US travelers. I also included total July numbers for every year in the top graphic for reference.
Some trends...
There is a significant drop in US visitors in 2025 vs 2023 & 2024. 1 million less in July 2025 vs 2024. In my opinion, this seems to be a clear result of the current US admin's policies, intentional or not.
There is also a more gradual increase in Canadians visiting All Other Countries, starting "post covid". In my opinion the reasons for this are less clear, but I suspect it is partially due to Canada having an increasing amount of immigrants (1 in 4 people) mostly from India/China, visiting home. This graphic only counts Canadian "residents".
Created with excel. US data is combined automobile crossings and air, all other countries are air only.
Sources: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=2410005701 And https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=2410005601