Some downtown Las Vegas hotels are offering Las Vegas Canadian dollar parity, treating the loonie as equal to the US dollar, in a bid to reverse a sharp collapse in Canadian visitor numbers that has left American tourist destinations scrambling for business.
The move comes as travel from Canada to the United States remains well below 2024 levels, with Canadian residents making 25% fewer return border crossings and spending about CA$3.3 billion less on US travel in 2025 than the year before, according to Statistics Canada.
Las Vegas Canadian dollar parity: how desperate has it got?
Officials from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority travelled to Canada last month to meet travel advisers, tour operators and airline representatives.
‘We’re here to make sure you know that we care about Canada,’ Steve Hill, the authority’s president, said while in Vancouver.
New York state has also launched a ‘NY Loves Canada’ promotion this summer, offering discounts at hotels, restaurants and attractions. Graceland is among the popular destinations that have made separate overtures to Canadian visitors.
At the national level, Brand USA, the US tourism industry’s marketing organisation, is bringing its Travel Week trade-event series to Canada for the first time in October, expanding and rebranding a programme previously known as Canada Connect.
Tariffs and tension drive the boycott
The tourism downturn sits against a backdrop of deepening political hostility. Trump imposed import taxes of up to 50% on a range of Canadian products. Canada retaliated in kind.
A day after the World Cup final, Trump announced fresh tariffs on CA$20 billion worth of Canadian goods. The Conversation reports that Trump’s Section 338 tariffs, targeting $28 billion in Canadian goods, have since taken effect, with early estimates projecting they could cost 90,000 Canadian jobs.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed insults from members of Trump’s Cabinet as childish and undignified. Trump separately ordered the US government to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’.
Statistics Canada analysts said in a July report that the abrupt pullback in stateside travel signalled ‘a persistent shift away from the United States by Canadian residents in their travel preferences’.
Canadian air travel to the US had begun declining in September 2023, Statistics Canada data shows, but the fall deepened sharply after Trump’s return to the presidency.
The US National Travel and Tourism Office estimates that during the first six months of 2026, Canadians made even fewer overnight visits than during the same period last year.
Florida saw a 7% decline in Canadian visitors in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to Visit Florida. Visit California, citing data from Tourism Economics, estimated the fall in Canadian visitation to that state at 20%.
Deborah Friedland, a hospitality consultant at Eisner Advisory Group, said the mood shifted fast after the World Cup. ‘You went from this really high, exciting moment for the U.S. in terms of international attention, to the next week, it’s negative again,’ she said. ‘It’s one step forward and two steps back.’
Tentative signs of improvement emerged in May, June and July, when border crossings picked up slightly. Car trips accounted for most of the uptick, while air travel fell from year-earlier levels in every month through June, Statistics Canada said. The World Cup, co-hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico, gave some Canadians a reason to cross the border during those weeks.
With summer winding down, the coming months will test whether the boycott extends into another winter. Large numbers of Canadian snowbirds typically head to Florida, Arizona and California when temperatures drop.
Eileen March, a life coach from Calgary, said she refuses to travel to the US while Trump is in office and will not even book flights with US layovers. March, 41, said the latest tariff round ‘reinforced my initial decision to not travel in the U.S. at all while he is in office.’
Friedland said she would be ‘surprised’ to see a sudden surge in Canadian winter travel: ‘I’d be surprised if we’re talking a year from now and all of a sudden you see this huge uptick in Canadian travel over the winter months.’
