Travel from Canada to U.S. dropped 26.3% in October: StatCan

In October, Canadian residents made fewer trips to the United States, with return visits falling 26.3 per cent to 2.3 million compared with the same month last year, according to Statistics Canada’s monthly travel data.

This figure is roughly on par with September, suggesting Canadians continued to avoid U.S. travel as colder weather set in.

Travel between Canada and the U.S. made up 70.1 per cent of all international trips by Canadians in October, reports StatCan 

By mode of transport, return trips by car dropped 30.2 per cent to 1.6 million, while air travel declined 15.1 per cent to 685,100 trips year-over-year.

Conversely, travel from the U.S. to Canada rose three per cent to 1.8 million trips, marking the first increase after eight consecutive months of year-over-year declines.

Car arrivals remained steady, air arrivals grew 6.3 per cent to 448,000, and cruise ship arrivals reached 122,800, up 22.2 per cent from 2024.

Trips to Canada by overseas visitors climbed 11.7 per cent, with 549,000 arrivals in October—81 per cent of them by air. Europe and Asia were the main drivers of this increase, posting gains of 10.5 per cent and 14.9 per cent, respectively.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, arrivals from the U.S. rose 1.5 per cent, while overseas arrivals grew 2.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, Canadian return trips from overseas increased 9.1 per cent year-over-year, with a seasonally adjusted rise of 2.3 per cent in October.

Air travel accounted for 997,500 of these trips, a 9.6 per cent increase compared to last year.

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