Five years later, fewer travellers visiting Canada than before pandemic

The number of travellers visiting Canada has increased over the past four years, but is still below levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new Statistics Canada report.

The latest travel data says about 3.6 million non-residents visited Canada in June 2024. That’s down 6.3 per cent compared to June 2019, the last summer before pandemic travel restrictions cut the number of visitors drastically.

Travel numbers from outside the U.S. were especially down, with non-U.S. residents visiting 16.1 per cent less frequently than before the pandemic. 

Compared to last year, about 289,000 more people visited Canada in June. That number is also up about 1.45 million compared to 2022, when travel first started to pick up again.

But it’s still 243,000 below the number of travellers in June 2019.

After the global pandemic was declared, travel numbers plummeted in 2020, and though they’ve been steadily increasing since then, people still aren’t visiting Canada at the same rate.

Looking at seasonally adjusted rates, which account for higher travel numbers in summer and Christmastime, the trend line for all recent months still sits below 2019 levels.

In June, 2.9 million people visited from the U.S. — about 1.7 million by car, with another 717,000 visiting by air, 280,000 by cruise ship or other commercial boat, and the rest by some other mode of travel.

Of the 746,000 overseas travellers visiting Canada, the highest number came from the United Kingdom, with nearly 100,000 visitors in June. Following the U.K. were India, France, Australia and Mexico.