A top tourism official in Western New York says he is concerned about a dip in visitors from Canada after recent data revealed that the number of cross-border visits from Canadians dropped significantly in February amid an ongoing trade war.
Speaking to CP24.com on Monday, Patrick Kaler, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara, said cross-border travel from northern neighbours dropped 14 per cent year-over-year in February.
“I am hearing anecdotally from our hotels, our attractions, that they are seeing a downturn in their overall Canadian visitation,” he said.
He said he fears when the March border data comes in, it will show a similar trend.
“This is a big concern for us,” Kaler said.
“Obviously the talk of tariffs have changed a lot of the overall Canadian sentiment towards the United States and especially towards travel.”
Kaler said the region typically depends on Canadians for about 35 to 40 per cent of its total tourism.
“It’s very important. It’s beyond just the tax base that it creates, but it creates jobs,” he said.
“To see that pipeline cut off from us… it’s going to mean some hard decisions for some of our businesses probably if we’re not able to replace those visitors from other destinations within the United States.”
Amid the trade dispute, Kaler added that a recent advertising campaign geared at attracting Canadian travellers to the region was also suspended.
“Unfortunately, when the tariff talk started in early February, the comments on social media were very strong and so we decided to take it (the advertising campaign) down,” he said.
“We can appreciate the sentiment of the Canadian travellers and we don’t want to be disrespectful of how they’re feeling towards the United States at this point and go in with kind of maybe a tone-deaf message.”
Canadians appear to be showing declining interest in travelling across the border amid a trade war triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year.
According to one travel monitor, flight bookings for the summer season on Canada-U.S. routes are down 70 per cent compared to this time last year.
In a statement to CTVNews.ca last week, one U.S. industry association said it hoped the negative consumer sentiment would be short-lived.
“Both our destination and tour operator members have heard a growing sentiment that Canadians do not want to travel to the U.S. right now,” a statement from the International Inbound Travel Association read.
“We are hopeful that political rhetoric and policy will not have long-term downturn effects.”
Several tourism operators on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls told The Canadian Press last week that they have seen a boost in business amid the trade war, with some of them attributing it to a rise in staycationers who may have otherwise gone south of the border.
Kaler said as they enter the high season, they are trying to figure out what other markets they can appeal to amid the glut in Canadian travellers.
“It’s not as if turning on a spigot where we’re going to just see automatic replacement of those visitors coming from other destinations,” Kaler said.
“So hopefully this won’t last very long that we can get the business back as usual and we can start welcoming our friends back across the border.”
