TORONTO — San Antonio is guaranteeing a Texas-sized welcome for Canadian travellers, as Air Canada gears up for its new YYZ-SAT flights starting May 1.

“That famous Texas hospitality is very much alive and well in San Antonio,” said Visit San Antonio’s Dee Dee Poteete in an interview with Travelweek yesterday, ahead of the tourism board’s industry reception at Harbour 60.

No matter what’s happening in politics, she said, San Antonio is there for Canadians, and will be for a very long time: “We’ve been around since 1718. We’re not going anywhere.”

AIR CANADA’S 3X WEEKLY FLIGHTS

The pretty Texas city best known for the San Antonio River Walk and the Alamo is forecasting a 6% increase in international visitation for 2025.

Canadian visitation? There was a 2% YOY gain in 2024, however the outlook for 2025 is a 14% decrease. From that comparison point, the YOY forecast for 2026 is a 12% increase.

A big boost – from YYZ at least – starts next month with Air Canada’s new flights.

Air Canada’s Viktor Spysak, Partner, Sales & Tourism Partnerships, and Yazdan Bakhtiary, Partner Regional Sales, were on hand at last night’s reception to highlight the new route. Available May 1 through Oct. 23, Air Canada’s seasonal YYZ-SAT service on A220 aircraft will operate 3x weekly. Departures from Toronto are Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, at 6:20 p.m. For the return, flights depart SAT Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 10:30 a.m., arriving back in Toronto at 3:07 p.m.

SAT’s Jacob Tyler said the airport is currently undergoing a transformation, and the best news is, all the work is happening with no negative impact to the daily flow of passenger and airline operations. “San Antonio is growing like crazy and we need the  airport to continue to grow,” said Tyler. SAT’s US$2.5 billion overhaul will be ready in 2028. “We’re on schedule and on budget.”

Air Canada will be flying out of SAT’s Terminal A. “We’re super excited to have Air Canada back,” said Tyler.

‘QUIET TOURISM’ & NEW HOTELS 

The drop in Canadian visitation to the U.S. isn’t new, and the March 2026 cross-border numbers from StatCan bear out the latest declines. On the other hand, some 20 million Canadians travelled south of the border in 2024, and in 2025, that number was 16 million.

It’s a slump for sure – but there’s also a whole lot of ‘quiet tourism’ happening.

Quietly or not, Canadians visiting San Antonio will find lots of welcoming hotels and plenty of attractions. New properties include The Monarch San Antonio, Curio Collection by Hilton, a 17-storey boutique property with 200 rooms.

Located in the reimagined Hemisfair District, The Monarch is one block from the Alamo, half a block from the River Walk and just steps from convention centre. “It’s a new jewel and it’s absolutely beautiful,” said Poteete. “The interiors are gorgeous, it’s all luxe. It also has 10,000 square feet of event and meeting space.”

Other new properties include The Gunter Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk, an historic hotel recently relaunched with a US$57 million renovation, and Kimpton Santo San Antonio – Riverwalk by IHG. At 347 rooms, it’s the largest Kimpton in Texas.

All in all San Antonio has 48,000 hotel rooms, “and 14,000 of those are right in the centre,” said Tamer Attia, Senior Sales Manager of Leisure Development for Visit San Antonio. The city has nine of the top 10 hotel chains, he added. “We’re just missing Accor.”

THE PHIL COLLINS – ALAMO CONNECTION

The area surrounding San Antonio’s most visited site, the Alamo, is in the midst of a major upgrade – and it couldn’t have happened without Phil Collins. Yes, that Phil Collins.

In 2014 the musician famously donated his extensive and priceless collection of Alamo artifacts to the state of Texas, on three conditions. Long an aficionado of Alamo and Texas history since watching Disney’s Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier at the age of 5, Collins asked Texas to re-establish the original boundaries of Alamo, to tell the whole story of what happened at the Alamo, and to build a world class museum and visitor centre.

The response from Texas? “‘Done and done,’” said Poteete. The US$550 million project reimagining of the Alamo experience is well underway, with the education centre now complete, and a new visitor centre coming in spring 2028.

Other new attractions in San Antonio include Mexico Ceaty, which opened in fall 2025 with dining and drinking venues across 20,000 square feet. Poteete says the site offers multiple restaurants, bars and retail shops, all themed to Mexico. There’s a sunken garden bar, a speakeasy and more.

While every tourism board’s visit to Canada comes with news of new hotels and attractions, the underlying message from Visit San Antonio was gratitude for the time travel industry professionals here took to meet with the city’s tourism reps.

“We love our Canadian friends and we’re so happy to welcome you back when you’re ready,” said Poteete.

More information about travel to San Antonio is at VisitSanAntonio.com. Watch for more Texas coverage in Travelweek Daily in early May, when Visit San Antonio joins other Lone Star State tourism boards for a Travel Texas sales mission.

Lead image caption: Visit San Antonio’s Dee Dee Poteete (far left) and Tamer Attia (far right) with other members of the San Antonio delegation at the April 14 travel industry event at Toronto’s Harbour 60