Boycotts, cancellations and price hikes: Get ready for a summer of travel chaos | Canada Voices

Canada’s travel boycott of the United States is going strong for a second year. But as Canadians look to redirect their tourism dollars, the industry looks different – and more chaotic – than in 2025.

Canadian airlines are scrapping flights to popular U.S. destinations. Geopolitical crises have ended, or seriously curtailed, routes to Cuba and the Middle East, while cartel violence has prompted travellers to reconsider trips to Mexico. The Iran war has led to sticker shock on airfares, and airlines are cancelling hundreds of flights as they contend with a pending shortage of jet fuel.

The domestic industry is hardly a safe haven. With gasoline prices at eye-watering levels, road trips are increasingly expensive.

And as international tourists shun the U.S., they’re often looking to Canada as Plan B – an outcome that’s great for the domestic tourism industry, but also pushing up prices for hotels, entertainment and attractions.

A significant chunk of Canadians are already delaying or cancelling their vacation plans owing to the fallout of the Iran war. It all adds up to one of the more frenetic periods in travel.

Here are nine charts that explain the big shifts in how we spend on travel – and where.

A one-third drop in U.S. travel seems to be the boycott floor

U.S. courts have curtailed Mr. Trump’s tariffs and the President has somewhat toned down his verbal attacks, but Canada’s travel boycott shows no sign of letting up.

In April, the number of Canadian residents returning from trips to the U.S. by vehicle or air was 30 per cent lower than the same month in 2024, generally in line with where it’s been for months. Other sources point to an even more dramatic decline. Research from the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, based on cellphone activity data, found that Canadian visits to U.S. metropolitan areas have plummeted by 42 per cent, year-over-year.

With Canada providing the largest source of international tourism into the U.S., that’s blown a hole in the industry. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that foreign travel spending fell by US$5.7-billion in 2025, a decline that was largely attributable to Canada. The group doesn’t expect visits by Canadians to return to 2024 levels for at least another four years.

War and soaring oil prices are rapidly pushing up airfares this summer

U.S. military operations in Venezuela, a fuel crisis in Cuba and flare-ups of violence in Mexico were already putting pressure on airfares before the Middle East war sent jet fuel prices soaring. Global carriers jumped to implement surcharges as international airfares spiked more than 5 per cent year over year in mid-April, according to Kayak, and were up as much as 15 per cent by early May. Travel hot spots such as Lisbon and London saw some of the biggest growth, with ticket prices to those destinations rising as much as 16 and 18 per cent, respectively.

Airfare for domestic flights has grown even more. Over March break, Canadians looked to support the local economy while contending with an ever-shrinking pool of global travel destinations untouched by crises

Average domestic airfares were up 36 per cent in mid-March and 22 per cent in mid-April, Kayak data showed, with cities such as Vancouver seeing spikes as high as 55 per cent.

Airlines are rushing to scale back flight capacity

As patriotic sentiment continued to drive down U.S. travel demand, Canadian airlines slashed flight capacity to the U.S. by 10 per cent in the first quarter of the year. Air Canada and WestJet have since ramped up reductions of available seats and sometimes scrapped entire routes as rising fuel costs offered even more incentive to do so.

WestJet alone reduced its June schedule by 279 flights, or 25,769 seats, according to aviation data company Cirium. Air Canada announced it was temporarily cancelling its flights to and from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on routes to Toronto and Montreal starting in June. It also suspended service between Salt Lake City and Toronto starting at the end of June.

According to Cirium, Las Vegas saw the biggest percentage change in seat capacity from Canada between 2024 and 2026, down about 35 per cent (221,545 seats). Canadians make up the largest portion of foreign visitors to Vegas – and still did last year, despite a more-than 17 per cent drop in visitors – according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The city has rolled out the welcome mat to lure back Canadians, with cash-bleeding casinos and hotels sometimes offering northern visitors the option to pay on par with the U.S. greenback.

Consumers have been shaken by war and rising fuel costs

With the boycott against U.S. travel not going away any time soon, and the added lift from FIFA World Cup tourism in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada’s domestic tourism sector is well positioned for another bumper year.

But much will depend on the mindset of consumers. Sentiment tumbled with the outbreak of the Iran war, according to Nanos Research. That broadly fits with the results of a special survey of consumer expectations conducted by the Bank of Canada in late March and early April, which found a strong majority of households expect the war to harm the economy and spur higher inflation.

As it is, the bank found 21 per cent had already cancelled or postponed trips as a result of higher travel costs.

That said, Mr. Trump’s election and the chaotic launch of his tariffs sparked similar anxiety among consumers last year, and that didn’t seem to hold Canadians back from embarking on adventures. It just changed how and where we took our vacations.

Canada’s travel boycott is on a scale unlike any other country

Several other large, developed countries, such as Germany and France, have pulled back from U.S. travel. However, the flow of travellers from those countries to the U.S. is generally one-tenth that of visits by Canadians. What’s more, those declines were partially offset by increases in travellers from countries such as Britain, Japan and Israel.

In fact, Canada’s travel backlash has been significantly blunted by an increase in visitors from Mexico, of all places, despite immigration crackdowns targeting Latinos and Mr. Trump’s threats of mass deportations. It’s part of a multiyear increase in travel from Mexico as people cross into U.S. border communities to shop and visit family. Last year Mexico topped Canada as a source of travellers to the U.S. for the first time outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That said, Canadians spend far more when they go to the U.S. Our absence caused the U.S. travel services balance for 2025 (the amount that gets spent by tourists to the U.S. less what Americans spend abroad) to shrink at the fastest pace since at least the late 1990s, seriously undermining the White House’s claim that Mr. Trump “has done more for American tourism than anyone.”

Canadians are keeping a lot of their tourism dollars at home

When Canadians first started to bristle at the idea of crossing the southern border, Canada’s domestic tourism sector saw record-breaking growth, offsetting a decline in spending by foreign visitors.

Patriotic Canadians spent nearly 3 per cent more touring at home in 2025 compared to 2024, Royal Bank of Canada data showed. Meanwhile, total summer tourism revenue jumped 6 per cent year-over-year to $59-billion, according to Destination Canada, a Crown corporation that promotes tourism. Last year saw the highest summer revenue on record, surpassing even prepandemic levels.

Coupled with expected growth in U.S. and foreign spending, 2026 is on track to reach $140.9-billion in projected tourism revenue, or a 6-per-cent bump from last year, Destination Canada forecasts.

In fact, tourism growth has been outperforming the broader economy, with the sector’s gross domestic product rising at roughly an annualized 5 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, RBC data showed. That’s compared to an overall contraction in GDP by 0.6 per cent annualized in the fourth quarter.

While Canadians boycott the U.S., more Americans are heading here

After a bumpy start to last year that accompanied the launch of Mr. Trump’s trade war against most of the world, Canada’s tourism sector saw an influx of international visitors. Spending by foreign travellers jumped by 3.6 per cent in the fourth quarter, the fastest growth in two years, according to Statistics Canada.

Whether that momentum can carry through 2026 is the question. It helps that U.S. travellers are flocking north. In March, the number of U.S. residents entering Canada jumped 28 per cent from the same month the year before. That fits with U.S. data from Chase Travel, the travel portal for Chase Bank’s credit card holders, which shows bookings from U.S. travellers to Canada up 26 per cent this year compared to last year.

At the same time, Canada enjoyed a bump in demand from other international travellers. It’s impossible to say how many of them came to Canada instead of the U.S., but many of the same European and Asian countries that cut back on U.S. travel provided more visitors to Canada (for instance, Germany, France, South Korea and China). With Toronto and Vancouver set to host World Cup matches this summer, that should bode well for Canada’s tourism sector, unless rising airfares and jet fuel disruptions get in the way.

The cost of hotel rooms in Canada is surging

Alongside domestic airfare, hotel prices have surged across major Canadian cities, including Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal – though not always in tandem.

The average three-month annual change in room prices reversed sharply for Toronto and Vancouver last July. As the first trade war summer kicked into full gear, Canadians looked for ways to support the local economy with their vacation days and dollars, and the two cities continued to see gains well into the summer. Toronto, in particular, saw spikes of 12 and 10 per cent in visitors from Britain and Germany, respectively, as Europeans looked for alternatives to the U.S. This was in large part due to the current political climate, according to a study published last summer on behalf of Destination Ontario and Destination Toronto.

Montreal lagged behind the two cities in price increases, in part due to a surge in hotel openings after COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted. Hotel capacity grew by 4 per cent last year, according to a report from Tourisme Montréal. In Vancouver, rising hotel prices saw a reversal in the winter, possibly due to more conventions and group bookings negotiated at lower rates, according to Costar.

Canadians are looking abroad for travel alternatives to the U.S.

After large numbers of Canadians cancelled their U.S. travel plans last year, many of them vacationed closer to home. But many others turned their focus to international markets, particularly in Europe, Asia and Mexico, which all saw the volume of trips by Canadian residents jump between 12 and 16 per cent last year.

The options for Canadians looking for non-U.S. destinations this year is more complicated. Cuba, which has historically been a popular draw, is in the grips of a U.S.-enforced fuel embargo that has prompted airlines to suspend flights to the country until October. Mexico’s tourist industry was rocked by drug cartel violence in February, though booking data from Flight Centre show another uptick this year.

The big winner, however, is Japan. The country has enjoyed a tourism boom aided by its weak currency – last year nearly 700,000 Canadians travelled there, up 18 per cent from 2024, Japan National Tourism Organization numbers show – though fuel disruptions in Asia could put that at risk.

How Americans are trying to lure us back

In May of last year, panicked California tourism officials launched a “California for Canadians” campaign, offering 25 per cent off hotels and attractions for visitors from the north. It didn’t work.

Canadian trips to the Golden State fell as much as 38 per cent in the months that followed, according to Visit California, a non-profit tourism organization, and as of March this year, visits by Canadians were still falling.

California’s failed experiment in winning back Canadians hasn’t deterred other U.S. states from giving it a shot.

Las Vegas

Few U.S. tourism destinations depend more on Canadians than Sin City. With the latest figures from the Harry Reid International Airport showing a 39-per-cent year-over-year drop in arrivals from Canada, casino magnate Derek Stevens launched an “At Par” program at three resorts (Circa, The D and Golden Gate) accepting loonies at the value of one U.S. dollar on hotels, meals and some slot machines (but only up to US$500). The city’s tourism board has also approved a US$3.5-million, three-year marketing blitz targeting Canadians.

Arizona

Arizona tourism officials traveled to Toronto in February to pitch the state as a destination following a 20-per-cent decline in visits from Canada. The Mountain Shadows Resort in Scottsdale launched a “Northern Neighbours Offer” (yes, with the “u”) with 30-per-cent discounts on rooms.

Florida

While Florida Governor Ron Desantis has laughed off the Canadian boycott, a nearly 15-per-cent drop in visits from Canadians last year, led by a collapse in snowbird arrivals, prompted the state’s marketing board to launch a “Live More Floridays” campaign across Canada. Walt Disney World introduced deals targeting Canadian residents, with discounts of up to 30 per cent on tickets and hotels. Despite those efforts, Air Transat cancelled its flights to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando for the 2026 summer season amid slumping demand.

Maine

Maine Governor Janet Mills has been the most outspoken U.S. state leader in trying to win back Canadian tourists. She visited several provinces last year and mounted other charm offensives such as “Welcome Canadians” signs across the state. Incidentally, in March, Maine recorded its first year-over-year increase in border crossings from Canada in 14 months – albeit just a 1-per-cent gain.

New Jersey

Hotels and campgrounds have been ramping up financial incentives to lure back Canadians, especially visitors from Quebec, as Gov. Mikie Sherrill vocally pushed back against the U.S. President’s policies. The popular Quebec Motel on the Jersey Shore, for example, offered to absorb exchange rates for returning northern customers alongside a 20-per-cent discount.

New York

The state has rolled out the welcome mat for its northern neighbours through discounts and delegation work as it bled 3.6 million tourists from Canada between 2024 and 2025. The North Country Chamber of Commerce in Plattsburgh, N.Y., even launched TV ads in Ottawa and Quebec last May, alongside a “cross border specials” web page to list perks and exclusive discounts for Canadians.

Colorado

Defying the trend of declining Canadian tourism, air capacity between Denver and Canada was up two per cent year-over-year and passenger traffic is up one per cent, according to numbers from the Colorado Tourism Office. Marketing efforts to strengthen ties with Canada were launched early in the trade war, including an annual “Colorado–Canada Friendship Day” inaugurated last spring.