Nearly half of Utah's foreign tourism comes from this country, and they're not coming this year

Yahoo

11-06-2025

For more than a third of her life, Tina Hunt has made a tradition of visiting the Southwest for her birthday. When the 59-year-old started daydreaming about this year's 10-day trip last fall, she felt called to return to St. George, Utah, where she and her husband enjoy mountain biking, hiking and sightseeing.
Yet when the Vancouver, Canada, residents boarded the plane in April, it was bound for Costa Rica. And at no point would they touch down on United States soil. Hunt made sure of that.
'Just with the things going on, we thought, 'Nope,'' Hunt said. 'We're just part of those Canadians who are 'Nope. Not until things change.''
Canadians, who have a reputation for being some of the most polite people in the world, have been putting their foot down this year when it comes to traveling to the United States. Infuriated by President Donald Trump's threats to make the U.S.' northern neighbor its 51st state, concerned about the effects of tariffs on their economy and shaken by border detainments and airplane crashes, they have been changing or canceling trips in droves.
And perhaps nowhere is their absence felt more keenly than in Utah, where Canadians account for nearly half of the state's foreign tourists. The Salt Lake Tribune explored data and spoke with tourism officials and small business owners to find out how declining numbers of tourists from Canada are impacting Utah.
'The trend seems to be that they're going away, right?' said McKay Edwards, working partner at Moab Springs Ranch, a collection of bungalows near Arches National Park. 'They're canceling instead of coming.'
Perhaps unsurprisingly given their proximity, similar mountain terrain and propensity for adventure travel, Canadians generally like visiting Utah. In 2023, 40% of Utah's foreign tourists — more than 270,000 people — hailed from Canada, according to the Utah Office of Tourism. The French are the next most likely to visit the state, accounting for 7.3% of its foreign travelers, followed by Germans at 6%.
Relative to the nearly 10 million Americans who visit the state annually, the number of Canadians coming in is small. But their spending power is mighty.
Edwards said they tend to stay longer and spend more per visit than Americans. They are also conscientious visitors, he said, who tend to respect the surrounding environment and his ranch's rules.
The Canadian market is of such importance that the Utah Office of Tourism has market representatives in the country to help promote the state. Last year, the tourism agency extended its contract with a consulting firm to spearhead strategies to draw even more visitors from the north.
'Clearly,' said Natalie Randall, managing director of the Utah Office of Tourism, 'Canada is a critical market to us in Utah.'
From the day Trump reentered the White House, however, luring in Canadian visitors became exponentially more difficult.
On his first day in office, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. In February, he made the first of numerous suggestions that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state, prompting calls for boycotts within the northern country. By early March, according to a study released by the not-for-profit research institute Angus Reid, 58% of Canadians planned to cancel or delay travel to the U.S. That movement only gained momentum earlier this month when Trump told newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, 'Never say never' after Carney remarked that Canada is not for sale.
Amidst those already roiled waters, stories about Canadians being detained by U.S. immigration officials — including actor Jasmine Mooney — make people like Hunt, who lives just 20 minutes from the border, think twice about crossing over.
'Just the disrespect, you know?' Hunt said. 'We're a sovereign country. We have our ways of being and doing, and just the repeated threats of annexing us? Honestly, most are saying 'No effing way.''
Randall said her office is aware of the downturn in Canadian tourism nationwide. Ticket sales for summer flights from Canada to the U.S. are down 21% when compared with the same time in 2024, the biggest drop from any country, according to an analysis of Airlines Reporting Corporation data by The New York Times. Statistics Canada reported car travel from Canada dropped 35% in April compared to April 2024, marking the fourth straight month of year-over-year decreases.
That visitation void is seeping down into the Rocky Mountain states, including Utah.
Each of the past four weeks, bookings and revenue from Canadian tourists at U.S. mountain destination towns have fallen precipitously when compared with the same week the previous year, according to Inntopia, which tracks lodging. A month ago, reservations for arrivals between May 1 and Dec. 31 of this year were down 40.1%. As of last week, they were down 46.6%.
Meanwhile, European bookings are down 30% year over year, said Tom Foley, senior vice president for business intelligence at Inntopia.
When he first noticed the downward trend in Canadian bookings in January, Foley said it was unlike anything he and other market monitors had seen over the previous two years.
'But as those declines have steepened and the data have become more clear in the ensuing months — including supporting data from other researchers,' Foley said. 'We've been able to directly attribute these steep declines to both trade and annexation events on the calendar.'
Randall, the Utah tourism director, said her office has only seen hints of that downturn. At Salt Lake City International Airport, for example, industry sources show bookings from Canada to the U.S. have begun to slow, according to an airport spokesperson. Still, last week the airport added service by WestJet, a Canadian carrier, offering direct flights to and from Edmonton, Alberta, in the summer.
'We've been able to hear a handful of sentiments from Canadians, and that handful isn't positive. They're either delaying or not coming,' Randall said. 'But again, it's a handful.'
Still, Randall acknowledged that even a handful of cancellations can add up, especially for Utah's small-business owners.
'Those small mom-and-pop guides and outfitters or bed and breakfasts,' Randall said. 'Any type of economic impact that happens always hits them first.'
It's already bludgeoning Moab Springs Ranch, Edwards said. A big, red, maple-leaf flag flies outside the historic ranch house-turned-front desk. Pretty soon, he said, it will be the only sign of Canada on his property.
An oasis among the red rocks, Moab Springs Ranch sits where Moab's first non-Native settler, Black frontiersman William Grandstaff, homesteaded in the late 1880s. Located just south of Arches National Park, it's now a collection of 20 well-appointed bungalows and townhouses nestled among two springs. Edwards humblebrags that the ranch has been TripAdvisor's No. 1 Traveler's Choice hotel for Moab for the past five years.
'We're independent. We're not part of a national chain, or anything like that,' Edwards said. 'So, I think we drive the big boys crazy because we're sitting in that number one position all the time.'
Due to the ranch's small size and the outsized number of American tourists who visit Utah, Edwards said foreign tourists make up a small fraction of his guests. In an average year, he said, international tourists comprise less than 10% of guests at the ranch. Canadians account for about 2% of his business.
Still, his profit margins also are not more than 8%. So, losing that clientele could be crippling. And Edwards said his booking numbers show that's a real possibility.
Year to date, bookings are down $170,000, he said. Foreigners account for 44% of cancellations.
And in August, Edwards doesn't show a single booking from Canada.
'If you're treading water and your nostrils are just above water, 5% can be a big deal,' Edwards said. 'So those of us who operate on thin margins are hurting from that.'
The rub, he said, is that international bookings were just bouncing back from the post-COVID lag. Plus, as was the case in 2020, Americans are not making up the slack, especially when it comes to trips to National Parks. The U.S. Travel Association reported declines in National Park trips among Americans' otherwise consistent travel patterns. With uncertainty over staffing at National Parks amid Department of Government Efficiency cuts, some visitors and park advocate groups have voiced concern that conditions at the parks will falter, in ways such as overflowing trash cans, bare toilet paper rolls and reduced programming.
'People don't know if the park is going to be open, if toilets are going to be overflowing,' Edwards said. 'The National Park Service is getting just hammered and people are rightfully concerned.'
When the parks faced a similar scenario in 2020 and during a government shutdown in 2023, Edwards said state leaders helped alleviate much of the uncertainty by guaranteeing they would keep the state's Mighty 5 parks open and operating mostly as usual. Legislators have made no such promises to cover the gaps made by federal cuts.
'There's been crickets. Nothing. And it's because they don't want to seem disloyal to the current administration,' Edwards said. 'There's a lack of understanding at our state level of how big an industry tourism is.'
Even if the state stepped up and provided some sureties, Hunt indicated the damage has already been done. She and her husband canceled a trip to New Mexico planned for later this year and will be going to Europe instead. And her next birthday trip? Maybe she'll look at Guatemala instead of St. George.
She doesn't know when, or if she will be back to the U.S. If it's up to her husband, it won't be in the next four years.
'What it comes down to is just kind of lost trust in the States at the moment,' she said. 'And losing trust takes over twice as long to regain back.'
This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.