{"id":283455,"date":"2026-02-14T07:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283455\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T07:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:03:15","slug":"strange-us-ski-season-missing-canadians-white-gold-and-a-snow-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/283455\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange US ski season: Missing Canadians, \u2018white gold\u2019 and a snow drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Steven Wright knew he had a problem long before the first snowflake fell.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wright, who runs the Jay Peak ski resort in northern Vermont, realized something was wrong last summer while talking to Canadian season pass holders who had decided they wouldn\u2019t be coming to the US \u2014 or his property \u2014 for the 2025-2026 winter ski season.\n <\/p>\n

\n The political enmity between the US and Canada had reached a fever pitch, especially once President Trump began referring to Canada as \u201cthe 51st state,\u201d and Jay Peak, located just 9 miles south of the Canadian border, was going to pay the price.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI called hundreds of season pass holders, and to a house, they mentioned the \u201951st state\u2019 thing,\u201d Wright said in an interview with CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n He testified last year about the conversations to a US Senate committee, and he said many of the customers \u201cwere choking up over the fact that they just couldn\u2019t, in good conscience, come to the States.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Beyond rhetoric about the 51st state, Trump had also ignited a trade war, with the threat and reality of stiff tariffs.\n <\/p>\n

\n Jay Peak is arguably unique; 50% of its business comes from Canada, which feels more like a neighboring town than a foreign country.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many US ski resorts don\u2019t rely as much on Canadian traffic. And as the season has progressed, the exodus of Canadian visitors has slowed significantly while the snowfall in the East has ramped up.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Wright\u2019s experience illuminates what he calls the current plight of \u201cthe border economies,\u201d encompassing many business owners who live and work near the US-Canada frontier.\n <\/p>\n

\n It also humanizes the repercussions of recent trade policy: many Canadian residents are abandoning or severely curtailing their years-long tradition of visiting the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe have a hockey arena \u2014 millions of dollars in hockey tournament business each year. We have a dozen restaurants on-site, conference space, wedding facilities. It all relies on Canadians to make it go,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The blow to Wright\u2019s business and to other ski resorts in the Northeast and out West that depend on Canadian travelers comes at an unusual moment. Snowfall in the eastern US this year has reached blockbuster levels. And much of the West has been suffering from a snow drought<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n While the number of Canadian tourists continues to lag in the US, many American ski resorts on the East Coast are heaving a sigh of relief. The massive amount of snow falling on mountains this season is luring many American skiers, offsetting the Maple Leaf hiatus.\n <\/p>\n

\n For Wright at Jay Peak, which has 81 trails, business is now only off 10% to 15%. But while he said he\u2019s pleased after the season began with a much steeper decline, he has no illusions.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHeavy snow has insulated us from the potential big downside of Canadian visitation. It has done so much to mitigate the situation with Canada,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat happens when that snow melts?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

Canadians are staying away and so is the snow out West<\/p>\n

\"Vail<\/p>\n

\n The number of Canadians re-entering Canada by car from the US was down every month last year, compared to 2024, according to Statistics Canada, the national statistical office. In December alone, there was a 30% drop in traffic from December 2024.\n <\/p>\n

\n US National Travel and Tourism Office figures show a nearly 22% drop<\/a> in visitor arrivals to the US from Canada last year through November, compared with 2024. Overall, international travel to the US during that period dipped by 5.4%. (Full 2025 figures are still being compiled).\n <\/p>\n

\n The importance of Canada as a source of tourists \u2014 and tourism dollars \u2014 cannot be overestimated.\n <\/p>\n

\n Canada is the largest source of international visitors to the US. More than 20 million Canadians visited the country in 2024, according to the U.S. Travel Association, generating $20.5 billion in spending, as CNN reported<\/a> last year.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the snapshot out West is a more complicated one to decipher. Unlike the East, ski resorts in the West are starved for snow so there are fewer visitors from anywhere.\n <\/p>\n

\n Vail Resorts, which operates about three dozen ski resorts in North America, including Breckenridge in Colorado, Hunter Mountain in New York and Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, reported a 20% decline in visits from skiers so far this season. The company\u2019s CEO, Rob Katz told investors last month that it was \u201cone of the worst early season snowfalls in the western US in over 30 years,\u201d according to a news release.\n <\/p>\n

\n The company said snowfall at its Western resorts was 50% below its 30-year historical average in November and December.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s not surprising then that bookings by Canadian travelers at ski resorts out West were down 41%<\/a> last month, according to the data firm Inntopia.\n <\/p>\n

\n To be sure, ski resorts have diversified in recent decades so many offer a host of other recreational activities \u2014 some tied to other winter sports, others completely snow-agnostic. For example, some ski resorts have built indoor water parks.\n <\/p>\n

\n Snow-making operations have also long augmented what Mother Nature provides.\n <\/p>\n

\n And some US ski resorts rely much less on Canadian visitors in general. For example, the drop in Canadian visitation hasn\u2019t hurt Smugglers\u2019 Notch Resort in Jeffersonville, Vermont, much.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are definitely off on our bookings of Canadian travelers as compared to other years \u2014 they come mostly from Ontario \u2014 but we don\u2019t have to bank on there being a ton of Canadian travelers,\u201d said Matt McCawley, a spokesperson for the resort. \u201cI think we are seeing more people traveling to Vermont, and I would assume it\u2019s the same for New York and New Hampshire and Maine, just because of all that snow.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n By all accounts, the snow has been epic. McCawley says 200 inches have already fallen at his Vermont resort and he thinks a season record of over 400 inches might be broken.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s like white gold,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\"There<\/p>\n

\n Other resorts are located near Canadian provinces less vexed by the new political messages coming from the US. For example, Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana draws visitors primarily from Alberta, where a local separatist movement<\/a> has found common cause with the conservative MAGA movement in the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cCanadian visitation has always been a sizeable part of our business,\u201d said Chad Sokol, adding there hasn\u2019t been \u201ca drastic drop.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But beyond the ski resort, the town of Whitefish is seeing a sharp drop in Canadian visitors.\n <\/p>\n

\n According to data collected by Explore Whitefish, the local tourism board, Canadian visitation fell nearly 25% in 2025. The town is near Glacier National Park.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a written statement, Explore Whitefish\u2019s executive director, Zak Anderson, noted visits from Canadian tourists have long been \u201ca cornerstone of Whitefish\u2019s winter economy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n In the case of Montana and other places, domestic tourists have stepped in to shore up some of the declines. What\u2019s more, political tension isn\u2019t the only factor keeping Canadians at home; the weak Canadian dollar is also partly to blame.\n <\/p>\n

\"Canadian<\/p>\n

\n But property owners are already looking ahead anxiously to the summer when many resorts market themselves to Canadian mountain bikers, golfers and other outdoor enthusiasts.\n <\/p>\n

\n At Killington in central Vermont, for example, the number of Canadian visitors who come to the resort for mountain biking was down double digits last summer, spokesperson Josh Reed said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a huge piece of our summer business,\u201d he said. \u201cFolks from Quebec are big into mountain biking.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Reed spoke to many mountain bikers who skipped their summer visits to the US last year, and he said they were \u201cextremely angry\u201d over the political tensions.\n <\/p>\n

\n Killington offered discounts and there were other incentives, including a campaign from the Vermont Mountain Bike Association, which hosted \u201cCanadians Ride Free Day\u201d in August, so the resort was able to lure back some of the customers from Canada who had stayed away.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBy the end of the summer, we were hearing more French,\u201d Reed said, adding it\u2019s an anecdotal measure of one slice of Canadian tourism.\n <\/p>\n

\n That offered a respite for Killington and other tourism businesses in Vermont. But it underscores the year-round nature of the problem even for ski resorts. They aren\u2019t just in the ski business \u2014 they are in the tourism business.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe entire state of Vermont is suffering,\u201d Wright said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Border crossings by car between Vermont and Canada declined 27%<\/a> in 2025, according to statistics from the state of Vermont, which derives nearly 10% of its gross domestic product from tourism.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s unclear how things will play out this year because as many have pointed out, the Canadian exodus resulted from far more than simply the discussion of tariffs. The rhetoric around annexing Canada and crowning it the 51st state rankled many Canadians, unearthing long-simmering tensions which have not abated<\/a>. Just this week, President Trump threatened to block the opening of a new bridge between the US and Ontario.\n <\/p>\n

\n Once the snow melts at Jay Peak, hockey tournaments dominate the summer schedule, and the most compelling matchups are between hockey-loving Canadians and their American counterparts.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf Canadians don\u2019t show up, it hurts our American market, too, because the American teams want to play the Canadians,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a business then.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That echoes a comment from an official with North Country Chamber of Commerce in Plattsburgh, New York.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOur leisure travel market is about 70% Canadians \u2014 it\u2019s a very large part of what we do,\u201d Kristy Kennedy, vice president of marketing and business development for the North Country Chamber of Commerce in New York state, told CNN<\/a> last year.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tourism operators continue to roll out incentives aimed at Canadian tourists, which could eventually stem the tide. For example, Minot, North Dakota, is one of a growing number of towns where some businesses will accept Canadian dollars \u201cat par,\u201d even though the currency is weaker against the American dollar right now. (Even some casinos in Las Vegas<\/a> have taken this extraordinary step of accepting Canadian loonies.)\n <\/p>\n

\n The friendship between the two nations is a storied one and has endured many setbacks, observers say. The question is, how long will the two friends remain estranged?\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis will roll back,\u201d said Wright at Jay Peak of the Canadian travel boycott. \u201cBut it will have a long tail for some Canadians.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Wright knew he had a problem long before the first snowflake fell. Wright, who runs the Jay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-283455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}