Canada tourism recovery is accelerating
Canadian national tourist board Destination Canada has released its Fall 2022 Tourism Outlook forecasting return to 2019 level by 2024 - moved forward from their Spring 2022 forecast of 2025 because of lifting of COVID restrictions and demand resilience.
Key predictions include:
- Domestic travel spend expected to reach 92% of 2019 level by the end of 2022, recover fully in 2023
- US market travel spend expected to reach 91% of 2019 level in 2023 and grow to 112% in 2024, driven in part by strong USD
- Visits from US projected to reach 82% of 2019 in 2023, fully recover in 2024
- However: in inflation-adjusted terms, real spending not expected to recover until 2026
- Overseas travel expected to recover more slowly, reaching 64% of 2019 in 2023 and approaching full recovery in 2025
- Asian markets expected to lag, but Chinese visitation might reach 134% of 2019 by 2030
Canada tourism could be contributing $142B to GDP by 2030, which would represent 35% growth in the next decade.