This article, written by Robert Silk, was originally published on Travel Weekly on August 7, 2026.
Has the plunge in Canadians’ cross-border travel bottomed out? Perhaps, given that data shows that U.S. visitation has ticked up since April.
But it might be too early to tell if this uptick indicates that Canadian sentiment toward its neighbor is on the mend, or whether numbers will continue to improve.
While Canadians’ cross-border travel started growing for the first time in 15 months this past spring, the drive market is pulling all the weight.
Canadian residents’ return trips from the U.S. rose 3.2% in June from a year earlier, according to Statistics Canada. The improvement followed a 7% increase in May and a 1.4% bump in April, the first month of year-over-year growth in Canadian cross-border travel since December 2024.
But while returning Canadians traveling by car rose 5.2% in June, Canadians’ cross-border air travel has fallen even further from last year’s precipitous drop. The number of returning Canadian air travelers fell 3.8% in June. That follows a 22.1% plunge in Canadians’ cross-border air travel in June 2025.
Welcome News for Border States
A rebound in the drive market has been a welcome development for Russ Flicker, managing partner of AWH Partners, which manages High Peaks Resort in Lake Placid, N.Y., and Topnotch Resort in Stowe, Vt.
Last year, Canadian business was down more than 50% at High Peaks and more than 65% at Topnotch, he said. This year has brought a partial recovery.
“In both cases, they are coming back nicely but still well below 2024 levels,” Flicker said.
AWH is projecting that its Canadian business will end the year up 33% from 2025, a result that Flicker attributes at least in part to “news fatigue.” He said some Canadians have tuned out the news about President Trump and his tariff war with Canada, relenting on their boycott of U.S. travel.
Ardalan Ansari, a Vancouver-based immigration consultant who also teaches at Vancouver’s Ashton College, said the Statistics Canada figures suggest that increased Canadian visitation to the U.S. is being driven not by vacationers but by daytrippers who are less afraid to cross the border for shopping or other simple itineraries.
A year ago, many Canadians were scared by intensive coverage of fellow citizens who had been detained by ICE and held in detention facilities, sometimes on dubious or highly technical legal grounds.
Immigration enforcement is tighter under Trump, but as Canadians have grown accustomed to the administration’s approach, legal fear has faded, Ansari said.
“Predictability, not renewed goodwill, is what’s pulling numbers back up,” Ansari said. “Whether it lasts depends on whether that predictability holds through snowbird season,” a reference to Canadians who spend their winters in the U.S.
Other data also suggests that the increase in Canadian visitation is mostly driven by daytrippers.
Airalo, an eSIM platform with more than 30 million global users, saw year-over-year drops of more than 20% in April, May and June for purchases by Canadians traveling to the U.S., only a slight trend improvement from previous months. June 2026 numbers were down 54% from June 2024.
Since the company’s eSIM international-calling packages are a minimum of three days, purchases are made almost entirely by longer-term travelers.
But numbers compiled by AirDNA, which assembles data from user reviews on Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and other platforms, does show that Canadian vacation rental stays in the U.S. turned slightly positive in June — up 3% year over year after being down more than 30% as recently as February.
Bram Gallagher, AirDNA’s director of economics and forecasting, said he’s not expecting major improvements going forward. He noted that the latest tariffs, announced by Trump last month, could again depress demand.
“We’re stabilizing on this sort of permanently low level,” he said.
Canadian tourism to the U.S. dropped 20.9% in 2025. Tourism Economics is forecasting 16.7 million Canadian visitors to the U.S. this year, up 4% from 2025.
Brand USA is optimistic that the time is right to re-engage at least some Canadians. This fall, the destination marketing organization will launch a digital campaign focused on young Canadians, a group that is more open to visiting the U.S. than other demographics, according to Brand USA’s research.
