Cross-Border Blues

The damage being inflicted on the Canada-US travel market by the tumbling Canadian dollar has yet to bottom out. In fact, the currency divide is accelerating the decline, according to the latest crop of figures from The US Department of Commerce, reports Montreal editor, Mike Dunbar in this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier.

In September 2013, some two million Canadians went south by land or air for a stay of one night or more. By the same month last year, the total had dropped to 1.8 million and this September’s tally was down to 1.6 million.

That’s an 11.6% drop from September last year, but a massive, 16.7% slide from the same month two years ago.

The numbers just released by the department’s National Travel and Tourism Office, show conclusively that the dollar difference is intensifying the demand drop month by month.

January numbers were off 1.1% from the same month in 2014. By March demand had dropped 3.7 percentage points and the June total brought the year-to-date decline to -6.1%.

And it didn’t stop there. Consecutive shortfalls since then have driven the market down a full 8.8% since September 2014.

The news is probably worse for tourism operators in America’s border states, since the bulk of the fall-off is being registered by the twitchy drive segment.

For the full story, check out this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier by clicking here.