Statistics Canada<\/a>, with the largest drop in travel to the United States.<\/p>\nCanadian residents returned from 3.4 million international trips in May 2025, a decrease of 22.5 per cent from May 2024. This marked the fifth consecutive month of decline. Of those trips, just over half, 53.1 per cent, were by air, down 3.1 per cent from the previous year.<\/p>\n
Return trips from the U.S.\u00a0dropped significantly, falling 31.9 per cent overall. Trips by air from the U.S. decreased by 17.4 per cent, and return trips by automobile declined 37.4 per cent to 1.5 million; over half were same-day trips.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Canadian return trips by air from overseas countries increased 9.3 per cent in May 2025 compared to the previous year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’ve shifted. Most people are shifting towards Europe or Japan or looking at destinations within Canada,\u201d said Terry Hawkins, owner and travel consultant with Terry The Travel Guy. \u201cWith everything that went on, we did see a significant drop in not just bookings, but in cancellations and that and people, people want, still wanted to travel, but when you know, when you pivot your plans, it takes, it takes extra time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawkins added that Canadians seem to be moving away from the U.S. destinations and finding new ones, whereas American travellers have put their plans on hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich is a difference, knowing a lot of colleagues that work down in the States,\u201d he said. \u201cThe U.S. [citizens] are holding back their plans for travel, whereas Canadians are still travelling. It just takes them time to pivot to new destinations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Travel agent Jody Strauss, owner of Jody\u2019s Travel Deals, has seen similar trends in her agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, a lot of people are looking into different things. Europe has been huge. A lot of people are somewhere vacationing in Europe,\u201d Strauss said. \u201cThere has been a drop, like for myself and throughout our whole agency across Canada, we\u2019ve seen a drop for various reasons. Some people don\u2019t want to go there. Some are afraid. But there\u2019s still people going. I\u2019m actually in the States right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strauss noted that some U.S. bookings are returning.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom November till January, there wasn\u2019t a lot of U.S. bookings at all, but now they\u2019ve kind of come back,\u201d she said. \u201cNashville is popular. People are still cruising, and a lot of cruises leave from the States or even Alaska cruises. People are still going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other St. Albert\u00a0travellers who spoke to the Gazette\u00a0are choosing to stay local or explore Canada. Saba Al Hammouri said she tends to stay in the region during the summer, but plans to travel during the fall and winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI tend to stay local during the summers, just because I love it,\u201d she said. \u201cMy favourite thing to do is hit up the St. Albert Farmer\u2019s Market on Saturdays. The river valley in Edmonton is really underutilized.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al Hammouri said when she’s looking to book her next vacation, she is planning on avoiding U.S. destinations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to get some travelling done, a little bit of destination travel. Right now, I\u2019m trying not to visit the States,” Al Hammouri said. “Some of the places on my bucket list are Italy. I\u2019d highly recommend folks check out places within Canada like Montreal, Vancouver, and the Maritimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haylie Langwald said she and her husband cancelled a cruise through the U.S. and booked a different trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband and I are travelling to London to catch a cruise to Norway,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Typically, they try to travel somewhere every year, she said. So far, she has been on 15 or 16 cruises, all departing from the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a cruise booked to go to the States, into Panama, but because of everything going on in the States, we cancelled that,\u201d Langwald said. \u201cWith our vacation dates already set, I just looked to see what was available, and found that one [different cruise]. I know it’s somewhere we’ve never been before, so it’d be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other travellers continue visiting the U.S. regularly. Merle Funk said he and his wife have had positive experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think a person wants to put off life because of a government. We\u2019ve always had a good time with them,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are good, very good. It\u2019s not about putting off going to the U.S. It\u2019s about enjoying life and leaving politics behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darlene Funk added that they visit Hawaii annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go every year in March. Every year we say we\u2019re going to go somewhere else, and every year we go back,\u201d she said. \u201cWe feel very safe there and know we\u2019ll get nice weather.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travel advisors say more people are choosing Europe and other destinations in 2025. Canadians made fewer trips abroad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-59079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}