OTTAWA — The year-over-year drops for Canada-to-U.S. travel aren’t so bad this time around – but most likely because we’re now more than a year into the declines.
The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show the number of Canadian-resident return trips by car from the U.S. in February 2026 were down 13% YOY.
The number of returning Canadian-resident trips by air from the U.S. declined 17.6%.
Overall, Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. by air and car was 1.5 million in February 2026. That’s down 14.5% compared to February 2025 – and a decline of 31.5% compared to February 2024.
Meanwhile Canadian-resident return trips from overseas countries by air totalled 1.3 million in February 2026, up 7.2% from the same month one year earlier. In February, for the second consecutive month, a greater number of Canadian residents returned from overseas by air (1.3 million) than from the U.S. by car (1 million).
U.S.-resident trips to Canada were up 6.1% from the same month one year earlier to reach 959,600, marking the first increase after 12 consecutive months of year-over-year declines.
MORE U.S. INBOUND STATS
It seems it’s not all doom and gloom for anyone selling U.S. travel though.
According to data from FlightHub, the U.S. remains the most popular spring break destination for Canadians, accounting for 33% of international bookings, though FlightHub notes that its share was down slightly from 36% in 2025. Bookings to Mexico increased from 6% to 9%.
FlightHub’s data also shows
The OTA’s data is based on roundtrip bookings originating in Canada for travel March 16 – 27, comparing 2026 departures to the same period in 2025. Data includes tickets booked between January 1 and March 5 for both years and was extracted on March 5, 2026.
