No 51st State: Resort-Area Hoteliers Feel The Canadian Cold This Summer

Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, just across the border from Quebec, has long depended on French-Canadian tourists to help drive its economy.

But once-bustling cross-border tourist traffic has slowed to a crawl in the months since President Donald Trump imposed new tariffs and floated the idea of annexing Canada.

The fallout is prompting a wave of trip cancellations, leaving hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues scrambling to make up for lost business at the start of what was already setting up to be a less-than-favorable summer season.

“The threat to their national sovereignty is insulting,” Jay Peak President Steve Wright told Bisnow. “It was an unforced error that the U.S. really didn’t need to put forward.”

Early season pass sales were down about 35% at Jay Peak earlier this month, said Wright, who also testified about his ski resort’s reliance on Canadian tourism before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee earlier this month.

It is not the only operator seeing major losses.

East Coast hospitality businesses from the northern border to the Jersey Shore to South Florida are adjusting strategies and expectations as Canadian tourists spend their dollars elsewhere. Many plan to double down on attracting domestic travelers, crossing their fingers that it may help fill the gap as summer officially kicks off.

Yet travel analysts are projecting a major revenue shortfall, and every large publicly traded hotel company that provides forward-looking projections has lowered full-year outlooks for the key metric of revenue per available room, Baird Senior Research Analyst Michael Bellisario told Bisnow in May. 

Oxford Economics is predicting a more than 20% drop in Canadian arrivals through the end of 2025, which dwarfs the roughly 6% decline expected for Western European travelers. Overall, international visitor spending is expected to drop $8.5B, or 4.7%, year-over-year.

STR is projecting a loss of 3 million room nights if inbound foreign visits drop 5% for the year and an additional 654,000 lost room nights for each percentage point it falls further.

That pinch is already being felt in Vermont, where Wright said 175,000 Canadian visitors contribute $150M to the state’s economy each year.

Roughly 50% of Jay Peak’s business usually comes from north of the border. Kingdom Trail Association, which operates mountain bike paths across the Northeast Kingdom, has seen its share of Canadian visitors fall by the same amount, 50%, Executive Director Abby Long said.

The Wildflower Inn in nearby Lyndon usually fields 10% of its customer base from Canada, General Manager Jenifer Oliphant said. In the first six months of 2025, that rate dropped to 2%.

Some of the few Canadians who have arrived at resort destinations this year were nervous to be in the U.S.

“They were not sure how well they would be received here,” Oliphant said.

“If I can catch them and I see that they’re from Canada, I usually make a point of thanking them for coming,” she said. “I think they’re surprised at how open we are to them coming.”

The economic impact of depressed Canadian tourism rates isn’t limited to border states like Vermont. It’s also being felt as far south as Florida, which has seen Canadian travelers drop off 20% in hot spots like Fort Lauderdale.

“During what we might call ‘the snowbird season,’ Canadians chose to lower their travel,” CBRE Head of Hotels Research & Data Analytics Rachael Rothman said.

Canadians are reportedly listing their Florida condos in droves, leading to increased supply in many parts of the state, the Financial Post reported. Nationally, the tourism industry is girding for a $12.5B loss in international spending, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. 

“This is a wake-up call for the U.S. government. The world’s biggest Travel & Tourism economy is heading in the wrong direction, not because of a lack of demand, but because of a failure to act,”  WTTC President and CEO Julia Simpson said in a statement.

“While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign.”

The most iconic beach destination for French-Canadians might be the Jersey Shore. The Wildwood area, in particular, has been catering to working-class Quebecois since 1970, when the provincial government created an annual two-week construction holiday.

Cape May County tourism officials responded by opening an office to the north, advertising to prospective vacationers. 

Quebeckers flocked to the area in droves, and local hoteliers began catering to that demographic, giving rise to businesses with names like the Royal Canadian Motel, the Quebec Motel and the Fleur de Lis Beach Resort.

“It’s a tradition that’s lasted for over five decades and we want to see it continue,” Daytona Inn & Suites owner John Donio said of his 43-room hotel in Wildwood. “I’ve seen children grow up and then they get married, they have children and bring their children down.”

Canadian tourists made up about 12% of the Wildwood area’s visitor base at one point, but that share has started to wane in recent years, Greater Wildwoods Tourism Improvement and Development Authority Director of Marketing Ben Rose said.

The metric took another blow following Trump’s annexation comments.

Canadian bookings dropped about 30% in the spring but have since recovered slightly, Rose said. He’s now expecting Canadian visits to be down about 20% for the year.

Rose said the partial recovery can be attributed to a renewed ad campaign his organization undertook in Quebec. By contrast, the Wildflower has actually pulled its online ads focused on the region, Oliphant said.

“We found that there were a lot of comments on our social media that were very inappropriate,” she said.

Instead, the Wildflower has reoriented its marketing toward Southern New England. Oliphant said the business is on track to have higher occupancy this year than it did in 2024.

Donio said the Daytona Inn could reach the occupancy levels it saw last year, which Rose characterized as especially strong.

“We’re projecting maybe a 3% increase over last year,” Rose said. “That’s a very modest gain.”

Wildwood tourism officials are also turning their attention toward domestic travelers, he said. That push included a spate of Spanish-language ads catering to Hispanic populations across the Northeast.

Hoteliers, restaurateurs and retailers are also coping with economic uncertainty that is dissuading a broad swath of Americans from major expenses. But many are still looking to travel this summer, even if they can’t splurge on pricey plane tickets.

That is boosting interest in relatively modest “regional tourist destinations” like Vermont and the Jersey Shore, which are both within driving distance of the largest cities on the East Coast, Rothman said.

Yet the loss of Canadian travelers will be felt in payrolls shrinking and lost future projects in a way that “cannot be overstated,” Wright told the Senate committee.

“We are forecasting a potentially catastrophic amount of trouble relating to Canada’s unwillingness to visit this summer, next winter and for some indeterminate future,” he said.

It’s not clear what exactly would bring Canadian tourists back to the U.S., but many hotel operators are eager to see them return.

“When you’re ready to come back, we’ll be here,” Oliphant said.