The Rise of Domestic Travel in Canada
The Canadian travel boycott of the United States has seen an unprecedented number of people in Canada skip vacationing south of the border. Recent data from Statistics Canada revealed that overall return trips from February to October 2025 declined by a whopping 21% for air travel and an even bigger 33.5% for overland travel. However, all of this sidestepping of the United States doesn’t mean Canadians haven’t been traveling.
According to the latest figures from Statistics Canada, it turns out that Canadians have decided to stay in their own country following the boycott, kicking off a massive domestic boom that has transformed Canada at the expense of the United States.
Canada is Experiencing a Travel Boom
Canadian tourism saw a large boost from April to June 2025. Domestic travel was up a stunning 10.9% year-over-year in that period. Statistics Canada revealed Canadian residents took 90.6 million trips between April and June that included a domestic visit.
Canada’s second-quarter domestic travel was up from the 67.6 million trips Canadians took in the first quarter, which was also already a 2.2 percent increase year-over-year. Among the important findings released was the figure that 58.6 million Canadians took same-day and 32.0 million overnight domestic trips within the country in the second quarter.
A Lot of Money Stayed in Canada
All of the domestic travel within Canada saw a massive amount of money stay within the country. Canadians reportedly spent $20.3 billion domestically from April to June, which was up by 13.5% year-over-year. January to March saw Canadians spend $13.8 billion on travel and tourism within the country.
“For same-day visits, Canadian residents spent an average of $101 per visit,” Statistics Canada reported about domestic trips taken in the second quarter. “For overnight visits, Canadian residents spent on average $449 per visit, and the average visit length was 2.6 nights.”
Americans Lost Out on Billions
Overall, Canadian residents reportedly took 99.3 million trips within Canada or abroad in the second quarter, only 8.9 million of which included a visit abroad. This was down by 12.1% from 2024. The decline was mainly attributable to the fall in outbound travel to the United States. Statistics Canada reported that Canadians took just 5.6 million trips that included a visit to the US in the second quarter, which was down 21.6% year-over-year.
Declining Canadian visits to the United States in the second quarter resulted in a lot of lost spending. Statistics Canada reported that “expenditures during visits to the United States totalled $4.8 billion, a decline of 14.9% from the second quarter of 2024.” This number is in line with an earlier warning about the issue that declining Canadian travel to the United States could cause.
A Warning About Trump’s Impact
In February 2025, when it became clear Canadians were upset with Donald Trump’s new policies toward Canada, the US Travel Association warned that Canadians in the US could face a loss of $2.1 billion in revenue and up to 14,000 jobs from a 10% decline in travel from Canada. The association noted Canada was the largest source of visitors to the US in 2024, with 20.4 million visits, which generated $20.5 billion in spending.
The US Travel Association’s February warning underestimated the damage that Trump and his tariff policies would do to travel. However, how 2025 shapes up in terms of travel declines may not be known for several years, though what we do know now is that Canadians are still traveling; they’re just opting to travel at home instead of to the US.