Last September, Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley issued a plea to Canadian travelers as the tourism-centric city grappled with a plummet in international visitors: “As the mayor of Las Vegas, I’m telling everybody in Canada, please come. We love you, we need you, and we miss you.”
In 2025, Las Vegas saw just under 1.2 million Canadian tourists compared to 2024’s 1.4 million, a 17.4% drop, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). The trend of declining visitors from up north has been reflected across the U.S.: Canadian government data indicates a 25% drop in year-over-year visits from Canadians to the U.S. in 2025.
New data unveils an even sharper drop-off in Canadian travelers to the U.S., and it’s not just tourists snubbing American cities—it’s business leaders as well.
A cell phone activity data analysis from the University of Toronto School of Cities published earlier this year found a 42% year-over-year median decline in Canadian visits to U.S. metropolitan areas.
These major declines in Canadian visitors weren’t just found in cities known for tourism, such as Orlando and Las Vegas—which would signify a downturn in tourism—but also in major industrial and financial hubs such as Dallas and Grand Rapids, Mich.
While these areas are still known for some tourism, they also have significant connections to Canadian business: Scotiabank opened a regional headquarters in Dallas in early 2026, joining Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce as Canadian financial institutions with a presence there. Grand Rapids is closely linked with Canada’s automotive industry and named Vaughan, Ontario, as a sister city earlier this month.
Dallas saw a nearly 50% year-over-year drop in Canadian visitors, and Grand Rapids saw a 53% drop.
“The story these numbers tell us is that it’s not just tourist travel—a lot of it is tourist travel—but there’s other travel that’s hurt as well,” Karen Chapple, analysis coauthor and director of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, told Fortune.
Why are Canadians shifting away from U.S. business trips?
Chapple believes much of the dip in travel is an extension of Canadians boycotting American goods. It has been more than a full year since President Donald Trump imposed a raft of global tariffs, including a 25% tax on most Canadian imports. The levies—and, most recently, threats to impose additional taxes in retaliation for smoke drifting into the U.S. following a bout of wildfires—as well as Trump’s assertions that Canada should be a 51st state, have correlated with Canadians souring on their southern neighbors. A Politico poll of 2,000 Canadian adults conducted in February found 58% believed the U.S. was not a reliable ally. Nearly 80% said Trump has made the relationship between Canada and the U.S. weaker.
“It’s probably driven by a feeling that, if we’re going to boycott in our personal lives, let’s do it in our work lives too,” Chapple said.
Those bitter feelings have translated to Canadians pulling back from the U.S. economy in a meaningful way. The Center for Economic and Policy Research found by mid-2025, U.S. establishments with the highest share of Canadians among its visitors saw about 6% fewer employees compared to establishments in less exposed markets, translating to a loss of between 14,000 and 42,000 jobs in those exposed markets. Canadian government data released late last month found Canadians spent $18.8 billion on travel to the U.S. in 2025, $3.3 billion fewer than the year before.
Chapple sees the loss of business travelers as even costlier than tourists. Business travel represents about 20% of total travel to the U.S., but accounts to about 60% of air and lodging revenue, according to the U.S. Travel Association. This is a result of business travel requiring greater hotel and conference center spending, as well as more dining out, compared to travel for leisure, when travelers may be visiting family or friends.
To be sure, Canadians are still continuing to pour money into U.S. assets, limiting the impact of a true boycott. From January to May 2025, Canadian investors poured $59.9 billion Canadian dollars ($43.3 billion USD) into net purchases of U.S. equities and debt, National Bank of Canada Financial Markets data showed, the largest sum in a year-to-date period since at least 1990.
Still, Chapple warned, fewer Canadian visitors in the long run could be a harbinger of more economic pullback from one of the U.S.’s key historical allies.
“It is indicative of a beginning of a shift that could continue,” she said. “Hard to say.”
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on May 12, 2026.
