International travel to and from Canada continued to decline in May, with both U.S. and overseas visits decreasing year over year, according to new data from Statistics Canada. Canadian-resident trips abroad also fell for the fifth straight month.
U.S. resident arrivals to Canada dropped 5.6% in May compared with the same month in 2024, totaling 2.0 million visits.
According to a press release, most of these visitors arrived by automobile (1.2 million), a category that saw a 7.0% year-over-year decrease. Air arrivals declined 1.7% to 470,100, while cruise ship passengers edged up 0.4% to 196,800.
Trips by overseas residents also declined, falling 6.6% to 575,100 in May compared with a year earlier. Nearly 80% of these arrivals were by air. This marks the eighth consecutive month of year-over-year decline in overseas visitation to Canada.
Visitors from Europe and Asia—Canada’s two largest overseas markets—were key contributors to the decline.
Arrivals from Europe decreased 4.1%, while those from Asia dropped 11.3%. The top three overseas source countries were the United Kingdom (78,400), India (61,300), and France (48,600), which together accounted for 32.7% of total overseas arrivals.
Canadian residents made 3.4 million return trips abroad in May, a year-over-year decline of 22.5%.
More than half of those trips (53.1%) were by air, representing a 3.1% decrease from May 2024.
Canadian air travel to the United States fell 17.4% from the same month a year ago.
In contrast, air return trips from overseas countries increased by 9.3% in May compared with May 2024.
Overall, automobile return trips to the U.S. declined 37.4% to 1.5 million, with nearly two-thirds of those being same-day trips.
Seasonally adjusted data shows modest growth in U.S.-resident travel to Canada in May, up 2.1% from April. This included increases of 2.5% by air and 2.7% by automobile, suggesting a possible monthly rebound despite the year-over-year decline.
Overseas-resident travel to Canada also rose 2.0% on a seasonally adjusted monthly basis. Oceania led the increase with an 11.5% rise, followed by Asia at 2.8%.
Notably, the number of visitors from Australia grew 12.2%, and Japan saw a 9.1% increase. These gains helped offset a 22.1% drop in arrivals from Italy.
Seasonally adjusted data for Canadian-resident trips abroad showed a 3.1% monthly decline in May. This marked the fifth straight month of contraction. Automobile travel to the U.S., which comprised 43.6% of Canadian-resident outbound trips, fell 2.2%.
Canadian air travel to the U.S. declined 4.2% and made up 21.4% of total outbound trips. Air travel to overseas destinations also dropped 4.0% from April and accounted for nearly one-third of all trips abroad.