Canadian Trips to U.S. Up Just 3% in October as Recovery Loses Steam

Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. rose just 3% year over year in October, down from 6.8% in September — the seventh consecutive month of growth, but at a pace that leaves volumes far below 2024.

Statistics Canada released the figures Thursday. Both transport modes grew: return trips by car rose 2.2%, and trips by air rose 5.6%. The year-over-year comparison flatters the recovery. Measured against two years ago, car return trips were down 29% and air return trips down 19.6%.

For sellers of U.S. travel to Canadians, the gap between browsing and booking is the story.

What does the search data show?

FlightHub reported Canadian search demand for U.S. travel up 17% year over year in October. But higher fares are biting: the average searched fare climbed 24% to 730 Canadian dollars. And the search volume sits only about 1% above two years ago, which means the demand pipeline is essentially flat once you strip out the weak 2024 baseline.

Searches aren't bookings, and both remain well short of the pre-slump trend.

Is intent recovering or stuck?

Longwoods International's survey points both ways. Some 47% of Canadian travelers plan a U.S. trip in the next 12 months, up from 39% in April 2025. Yet the share who say they don't intend to visit the U.S. at all rose to 51%, from 47% a year ago.

Put plainly: slightly more Canadians are open to going, but the outright refusals are growing too. The market is splitting rather than converging back to 2024 behavior.

How are leisure and corporate demand diverging?

The sharpest signal comes from the retail and corporate travel sides of the same house. Flight Centre Canada said its cross-border bookings fell 26% year over year in October. Its corporate sister brand, Corporate Traveller Canada, recorded a 24.5% increase in U.S. travel spending over the same period.

Leisure demand is still shrinking while business travel spending expands — a divergence that matters for anyone allocating inventory or marketing budget across the two segments. Suppliers chasing Canadian corporate accounts have a growth story; those dependent on holiday road-trippers do not.

What happens next?

Industry leaders in the Pacific Northwest, a region heavily dependent on Canadian drive-in traffic, said they don't expect the U.S. midterm results to produce a quick rebound. With car traffic still 29% below two years ago and refusals to visit rising, the recovery to 2024 volumes looks like a multi-year project rather than a 2026 event.