Fortunately, high demand for European and Canadian destinations has Travac Tours optimistic.
Travac Tours hasn’t sold a single seat for any of its U.S. bus tours since Donald Trump announced the imposition of tariffs on Canadian goods.
New York City tours are one of the agency’s most popular American destinations, says Cindy Tobin, the manager of the Ottawa tour operator, but interest has flatlined since the U.S. president’s Feb. 1 executive order. This week, she cancelled two of the 12 buses Travac planned to send to New York this year, and she expects to cancel all the rest if the trend continues.
“No one’s calling to book, so we don’t foresee that any trips to the U.S. we’ve planned to date will go ahead,” she said.
U.S. tours that were already booked for March went ahead, Tobin said, but the company isn’t even planning any tours for the country anymore. Roughly 30 U.S. trips it had already planned are likely to be shelved.
“By the response from our clients, we’re thinking that there won’t be any U.S. tours in the foreseeable future.”
Travac’s customers aren’t alone in avoiding travel down south. The number of travellers heading to the U.S. from Canada, by car, in February dropped by half a million compared to 2024, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Meanwhile, Canadian airlines WestJet and Air Canada have scrapped many flights to sunny U.S. destinations.
However, Tobin said there’s no shortage of clients wanting to take a vacation — just not in the U.S. “We’ll just keep on adding even more European, more international, more Canadian tours,” she said. She estimated European tours already made up roughly 60 per cent of Travac’s business, with destinations including Portugal, Spain, Malta and the Canary Islands.
Evening Update
Tobin said “the demand is there for Canadian and European tours,” and the company was reacting to the current political climate similarly to how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic: focus on Canada.
“During COVID, we added so many Canadian tours, and they all were really successful,” she said. “If that’s any indication, we just keep on adding more Canadian tours. Those will all be successful and we’ll be fine.”
Frédéric Dimanche, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, said he saw a “lasting trend” taking effect.
“Canadians love to travel abroad and I think they will continue to do so at the expense of the United States,” he said.
Dimanche also said a low Canadian dollar could encourage more domestic vacationing. Travac’s main clientele is well-spending seniors, but Tobin says it’s moving to book more trips to popular family destinations including Niagara Falls, Quebec City and Atlantic Canada for the summer.
“We typically have those tours, but we’re adding more dates because the families and even the seniors who aren’t travelling to the U.S. will look for other destinations within Canada.
“We already have clients coming in the last month or so who have said to us, ‘We travelled to the U.S. last winter, but we’re not going next winter.’”
The agency is also doubling down on its COVID-era additions of rail trips to Halifax and to the Okanagan Valley in B.C. to meet higher domestic travel demand.
“I really feel like that’s what people are looking for now,” she said. “They were looking for that during COVID — stay in Canada, you’re safer — and now I think it’s stay in Canada for financial reasons and for obviously what’s happened with U.S. and Canada relations.”
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