After U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power, anti-American sentiment spread in Canada, dealing a direct blow to revenue at U.S. ski resorts. With reservations and visits by Canadian tourists plunging at resorts near the border, there are concerns that structural damage across the tourism industry could drag on.
On the 26th, local time, Bloomberg reported that ski resorts across the United States, from Montana to Maine, are struggling with weak revenue due to a decline in Canadian tourists. In response, hotels and resorts have launched aggressive marketing, accepting payments in Canadian dollars, heavily discounting room rates, and expanding French-language signage, but the effect has been limited.
According to a survey jointly conducted late last year by the travel trade magazine Travel Weekly and the market research firm Phocuswright, 78% of Canadian travel agency officials said bookings to the United States had fallen from a year earlier. Tourism analytics firm Inntopia said that as of the 22nd, season bookings by Canadians at U.S. ski resorts were down 41% year over year, a drop more than eight times larger than the decline among Americans over the same period (5%).
Jay Peak Resort in Vermont, near the Quebec border, is a dramatic example of this shift. In an average year, the resort has generated more than half of its total revenue from Canadian visitors, but it took a major hit after season pass renewal rates among Canadian customers fell 35% from a year earlier.
Steve Wright, president and general manager, later said at a U.S. congressional forum on the Trump administration's trade war that "we called about 100 season pass holders directly to ask why they didn't renew," and "many said they could not, in good conscience, travel to the United States under the current circumstances."
Industry officials say the deterioration in bilateral relations following Trump's return has hurt business conditions. Inntopia data shows a recurring pattern in which Canada-origin bookings drop noticeably within 48 hours whenever Trump makes controversial geopolitical remarks. Tom Foley, Inntopia's managing director, said, "Canadians feel betrayed by a longtime friend."
Immediately after being sworn in again in 2025, Trump pushed a "America First" agenda and put pressure on ally Canada. On Feb. 1, he said he would impose a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian products, and he has stoked tensions by referring to Canada as "the 51st state of the United States." In response, the "Elbows Up" campaign urging Canadians to avoid U.S. travel spread nationwide, and demand for trips to the United States gradually declined. According to Statistics Canada, Canadians are redirecting travel demand domestically instead of to the United States.
The pain is concentrated in border regions. In Vermont, where tourism accounts for about 9% of state gross domestic product (GDP), a decline in Canadian tourists is estimated to have caused about $75 million (about 108.4 billion won) in losses last year. After both border crossings and visits to state parks fell in the summer, the Burlington City Council in Vermont, sensing crisis, even temporarily renamed the central shopping district "Canada Street."
Still, the situation is unlikely to improve quickly. Foley of Inntopia said, "Because trust has collapsed across generations, it will be extremely difficult to regain prior visitor numbers," and advised, "The U.S. tourism industry should abandon the assumption that the Canadian market will rebound and rebuild medium- to long-term strategies on five- and 10-year horizons."
Local workers said they are sensing that the target of Canadians' anger is not any specific region but "the United States itself." Josh Reed, communications manager at Killington Resort in Vermont, said, "Some Canadians are self-conscious just for having visited the United States."