US Tourism Groups Want Canadian Visitors Back. A Testy Trade War Isn't Helping.

LAS VEGAS, Josh Loewen sees the billboards everywhere.

New York loves Canada, they say. Come on down, the deals are great, the weather's warm, we miss you. Online ads chase him across his browser. Social media feeds fill with special offers, just for Canadians, just for him.

Loewen is a Vancouver resident. He's also a marketing executive. He gets what the Americans are trying to do.

He just doesn't care.

"It's such a big ask right now," he told the Associated Press. "It's just a wasted effort."

He's not alone. Not even close.

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The Numbers Don't Lie, Canadians Are Staying Home

Let's start with the raw data. It's ugly.

Canadian residents made 25% fewer return border crossings from the United States in 2025 than they did in 2024. They spent about $2.4 billion (CA$3.3 billion) less on US travel.

Twenty-five percent. That's not a dip. That's a crater.

Statistics Canada called it the deepest and most sustained decline since 1972, outside of the months following 9/11. Eleven straight months of year-over-year falls. The kind of streak that makes economists wince and tourism boards panic.

The pullback started in early 2025, right after Donald Trump returned to the White House. It continued through 2026. Canadian air travel to the US was down 2% in June, the 17th consecutive month of declines.

Here's the thing about 17 months: that's not a tantrum. That's a trend.

Some researchers think the official numbers actually understate the problem. A University of Toronto team looked at cellphone activity in major US metropolitan areas. They found a median decline in Canadian visits of 42%.

Forty-two percent.

"We're losing in the U.S., not just snowboarder travel and not just tourist travel to destinations like Las Vegas and Disney World," said Karen Chapple, director of the University of Toronto's School of Cities. "We're also seeing the loss of Canadian travel to big metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco and Dallas and Houston, places that are economically connected to Canada."

The geography of the boycott is telling. It's not just Florida and the ski slopes. It's the business trips. The conferences. The shopping weekends. The casual cross-border errands that used to be routine.

All of it, gone, or at least greatly diminished.

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What Sparked the Backlash?

You don't get a 25% drop without a reason. Or several reasons.

The tariffs came first. Trump imposed broad import taxes on Canadian goods in early 2025. Canadians called for boycotts, of US products, US vacations, US everything.

Then came the rhetoric. Trump talked about making Canada the 51st state. Not as a joke. As a policy position.

Then the trade negotiations collapsed. Trump raised tariffs to 50% on a range of Canadian products. Canada responded in kind.

Then Trump ordered the US government to rename Lake Ontario, a lake that literally borders Canada, to "Lake America."

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the moves from Trump's Cabinet "childish and undignified."

You can see why Canadians might not be in a hurry to book a trip to Orlando.

The boycott was informal. No one organized it. No one sent out a memo. It just happened, millions of individual decisions, each one small, collectively devastating.

"We used to go very often, at least I'd say twice a year every summer," said Daniel Fredette, a Quebec resident who used to boat across the St. Lawrence to New York. "But we don't go anymore because of that tension."

"We're trying to buy Canadian," he said. "We didn't mind before spending our money on the other side… but for the time being, we're buying Canadian stuff a little bit."

That's the thing about boycotts. They don't feel like boycotts when you're living them. They just feel like making different choices. Small choices. But millions of them add up.

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US Tourism Groups Fight Back

The Americans aren't taking this lying down.

They can't afford to. Canada traditionally sends more overnight international visitors to the United States than any other country. Mexico is close. The UK is in the conversation. But Canada is the heavyweight.

So the tourism industry is fighting.

New York state launched a "NY Loves Canada" promotion this summer. Discounts at hotels, restaurants, attractions.

Las Vegas tourism officials went to Canada last month. They met with travel advisers, tour operators, airline reps. Some downtown Vegas hotels are treating the Canadian dollar as equivalent to the US dollar, a 30%-plus discount, essentially, just for showing a Canadian passport.

"We're here to make sure you know that we care about Canada," Steve Hill, president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said while in Vancouver.

Graceland is trying. State and local tourism officials across the country are trying.

And at the national level, Brand USA, the US tourism industry's marketing organization, is bringing its Travel Week trade-event series to Canada for the first time in October. They're expanding and rebranding an earlier program called Canada Connect.

Billboards. Banners. Social media ads. Special deals. Love letters to a country that doesn't seem to love them back right now.

It's a full-court press.

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Why It's Not Working

Here's the problem: the trade war keeps getting worse.

Just when it looked like things might calm down, they didn't. US-Canada trade talks broke down again last month. Fresh 50% US tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian imports took effect. Canada said it would retaliate dollar for dollar.

The bilateral rift has deteriorated sharply. The insults keep flying. The tariffs keep rising.

And Canadians are watching.

"It's such a big ask right now," Loewen said.

He's a marketing executive. He knows how advertising works. He knows what a good deal looks like. And he's still not interested.

The tourism industry's efforts are "conciliatory overtures," in the words of the AP. That's a polite way of saying: they're trying to make nice while the governments keep fighting.

It's not working.

Rachel J.C. Fu, a tourism professor at the University of Florida, put it this way: "The 2025 numbers suggest that we are looking at more than a temporary reaction to one political announcement or one round of tariffs. We are seeing evidence of a broader change in Canadian travel sentiment and, potentially, travel habits."

A broader change. Not a tantrum. A shift.

Statistics Canada analysts said the pullback signaled "a persistent shift away from the United States by Canadian residents in their travel preferences."

Persistent. That's the word that should worry US tourism groups.

Then there's the Canadian dollar. It's weak. Really weak. Traveling to the US is expensive right now, even before you factor in the politics. Airfares are up. Hotels are up. Everything is up.

"Why would I spend 30% more to go somewhere that doesn't seem to want me?" one Canadian traveler put it on social media.

It's a fair question.

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The Geography of the Boycott

Some places are getting hit harder than others.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, saw the biggest dip: a 65.4% decline in Canadian travel, according to University of Toronto data.

Think about that. Two out of every three Canadian visitors to Myrtle Beach just... stopped coming.

Florida got hammered too. Panama City, Orlando, Cape Coral, Miami, Naples, North Port, all in the top 10 most affected cities. Yuma, Arizona. Brownsville, Texas. San Francisco.

Border towns are suffering in a different way. The casual cross-border traffic, the shopping trips, the gas fill-ups, the dinner runs, hasn't come back the way it used to.

"The St. Lawrence River is the boaters' highway, and it's not shared anymore," said Teresa Jansman, a marina supervisor in Prescott, Ontario. "It has nothing to do with anything but the politics of it."

Communities on both sides of the river used to feel closely connected. Now? "It's not coming back after COVID the way it should," Jansman said.

The pandemic disrupted the rhythm. The politics finished the job.

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Signs of a Thaw, Or Just a Blip?

Not every datapoint is grim.

July 2026 brought some good news. There were more than 2.27 million Canadian-resident return trips from the US by automobile and air, up 10.2% compared with July 2025. It was the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year growth.

The 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico, likely helped. Canada's national soccer team competed in the early weeks.

Some travel industry insiders see softening attitudes. Martin Firestone, president of Travel Secure Inc., told CTV News: "I do not think the anti-U.S. sentiment is as strong as it initially was. There will be those that will not travel to the U.S. no matter what, but I'm seeing many that had that attitude at the beginning, are now softening and actually traveling now."

But here's the catch: compare July 2026 to July 2024, before the political tensions, and you're still looking at a 28.9% decline in automobile trips and a 26.8% decline in air travel.

Year-over-year growth sounds good until you realize the baseline keeps shifting. 2025 was the disaster. 2026 is just... less of a disaster.

And the trade war just escalated again.

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What Happens Next?

The new president takes office in January. That might change things. Or it might not.

The tourism industry is betting on a reset. Brand USA's Travel Week in Canada this October is a bet on the future, a way to rebuild relationships before the political climate shifts.

But the damage is real. And it's not just about one administration or one set of tariffs.

Canadians changed their habits. They found other places to go. They discovered they didn't need to cross the border for a good vacation.

Flight Center Travel Group's data shows US leisure bookings from Canada have improved from last year's lows, but July bookings remained 39% below 2024 levels.

Thirty-nine percent.

Some Canadians will come back. The ones who own condos in Florida. The ones with family on the other side. The ones who just really love Disney World.

But others? They might not.

"For more than a decade, the Labour Day long weekend has usually meant a trip across the St. Lawrence River for Daniel Fredette," CTV News reported. Not this year. His boat stayed on the Canadian side.

"Hopefully things will get better, and hopefully people will be happy to see us do it because we're happy to go there," he said.

That's the key word: hopefully. Not certainly. Not definitely.

US tourism groups are throwing everything they've got at the problem. Billboards. Social media ads. Dollar-for-dollar hotel deals. Trade missions to Vancouver.

And Canadians are saying: thanks, but no thanks.

"It's such a big ask right now," Loewen said.

The trade war keeps escalating. The rhetoric keeps flying. The Canadian dollar keeps sinking.

Maybe the new president will change things. Maybe the tariffs will come down. Maybe Canadians will forgive and forget.

Or maybe they won't.

Either way, the US tourism industry has a problem. A big one. And no billboard is going to fix it.