Canadian tourists snub US and head to Mexico

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Mexico is reaping the benefits of a US travel boycott by Canadians angry at the policies of President Donald Trump, with visitor numbers soaring as airlines add new flight routes into the country.

The number of Canadian residents visiting Mexico climbed 15.6 per cent in March compared with the same month in 2024, according to the Mexican Secretary of Tourism.

Canadian air travel to the US fell 13.5 per cent over the same period, while cross-border road trips were down about a third, according to Statistics Canada.

Mexico’s tourism minister Josefina Rodríguez Zamora told the Financial Times the figures showed that Canadians were “opting for friendlier policies” by visiting her country instead of the US.

“I think they are choosing more friendly policies,” she added.

While Canada has for years been an important tourist market for Mexico, Rodríguez Zamora said that ties between the two countries had strengthened in recent months to “become more like brotherhood”.

Trump’s threats of annexation and steep new trade levies have triggered a patriotic boycott of American goods and travel in Canada. Reports of harsh treatment towards tourists entering the US have also weighed on visitor numbers from other regions, including Mexico.

The number of Mexicans taking flights to the US this March was down by almost a quarter on 2024, the first year-on-year decline since May 2022, according to the US Department of Commerce.

McKenzie McMillan, a travel adviser in Vancouver, said he expected a sustained “boom” in Canadians travelling to Mexico because the boycott of US travel in Canada was “only intensifying”.

He said his clients were committed to swapping beach holidays in California and Florida for trips to Cancún and Cabo, and trading city breaks in New York for Mexico City — at least for the duration of Trump’s term.

Some airlines have trimmed back the number of flights from Canada to the US in favour of its southern neighbour. Air Canada and Montreal-based Air Transat this week both announced new nonstop flights to Guadalajara, and said they would also increase the frequency of their winter services to other destinations in Mexico, including Los Cabos and Puerto Vallarta.

This redirection in travel flows could be beneficial for Mexico’s economy which is in the middle of a sharp slowdown, with tourism having made up 8.6 per cent of GDP in 2023. The IMF is predicting Mexico will fall into recession this year — in part because of Trump’s tariffs.

Tourism growth also slowed last year, but has remained above that of the broader economy.

“The best way to describe it is a state of resilience in an uncertain environment,” said Francisco Madrid, head of the sustainable tourism advanced research centre at Anáhuac university in Cancún.

The number of nights booked in Mexico by Canadian users on short-term letting platform Airbnb increased 27 per cent between March 2024 and March 2025. Bookings in the US, meanwhile, dropped 12 per cent.

Hotel booking platform Trivago said that a decline in Canadian searches for accommodation in the US had been offset by rising interest in domestic travel and a 20 per cent year-on-year jump in searches for Mexico in the three months to March.

Online travel agency Booking.com said that searches in Canada for accommodation in Mexico City were up 49 per cent in April, compared with the same time last year. Interest in beach destinations Cancún, Sayulita, and Playa del Carmen jumped by almost a fifth.

Mexican hotel operator Grupo Hotelero Santa Fe forecast strong occupancy rates for 2025 as Canadians and Europeans “look at Mexico more than the US” due to Trump’s aggressive tariff policy, said vice-chair Francisco Zinser.

Hyatt, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, reported stronger resort demand “in the non-US Americas”, including “increases in Canadian travellers into Mexico and the Caribbean”, chief executive Mark Hoplamazian said on an earnings call last week.

US vacation hotspots are meanwhile struggling to lure back visitors from the country’s largest international tourist market. California governor Gavin Newsom launched a marketing campaign in April inviting his “neighbours up north” to visit a state that’s “2,000 miles from Washington”.

Additional reporting by Rafe Uddin in San Francisco and Ilya Gridneff in Toronto