TORONTO — ‘Trump Slump’ seems to be having little or no impact on Canadian visitation to the U.S. so far, with official numbers by Statistics Canada citing a record 3.6 million trips in January.
This represents a 7% increase from December 2016’s numbers, as well as the highest level of Canadian visitors recorded since 2015.
Growth in January was mainly attributable to increases in both same-day car trips (+8.2%) and overnight car trips (+9.8%).
More Canadians were travelling overseas as well, with international outbound travel – the kind most often booked by travel agents – reached a record high for January.
Canadian residents made 1 million trips to overseas countries in January. That was down 0.7% from December 2016 but a 3.4% increase over January 2016 and the highest figure for the month of January since 1972.