This ski season, many Canadian ski enthusiasts have reluctantly forgo trips to American ski resorts. Eimear O’Leary-Barrett, a data analyst from Montreal, Canada, is a regular at Jay Peak in Vermont, having missed only two ski seasons since 2010. However, following President Trump’s recent threats to annex Greenland and the release of a North American map that includes Canada as part of the United States, she has decided not to renew her Jay Peak ski resort pass for next season.
O’Leary-Barrett is not alone. Data from industry tracking firm Inntopia shows that as of January 22, winter bookings from Canada to US resorts were down approximately 41% year-over-year, while bookings from domestic US customers were down only 5%. The agency also found a significant drop in bookings from Canada within 48 hours of each controversial statement made by Trump. “Canadians are furious, like they’ve been betrayed by an old friend,” said Tom Foley, director of business intelligence at Inntopia. ”
It’s morally unacceptable to go to the U.S.” Despite Canada’s own top ski resorts like Whistler and Mont Tremblant, many Canadians holding Epic or Ikon ski passes “chase after the snow,” heading south to U.S. states like Colorado, California, and Utah, where there is more snow that year.
Some ski resorts even accept Canadian dollars at a 1:1 exchange rate with the U.S. dollar, which, based on recent rates, is equivalent to a discount of nearly 30%. Many ski enthusiasts stock up on tickets in advance during the low-price period before the ski season.
However, Steve Wright, president and general manager of Jay Peak Resort, discovered last summer that Canadian tourist renewals for the 2025-2026 ski season had plummeted by 35%. He immediately called about 100 Canadian clients to inquire, and “many were choked with tears, saying they couldn’t accept going to the United States from their conscience,” Wright said. Since Trump’s return to the White House in early 2025, US-Canada relations have deteriorated sharply. In February of last year, Trump announced a 25% tariff on Canadian goods and repeatedly stated publicly that Canada should become the “51st state” of the United States.
In response, a movement called “Elbow Up” was launched in Canada, using the iconic defensive move from Canadian ice hockey to call on Canadians to unite and retaliate by boycotting American goods and cancelling trips to the US. A survey of Canadian travel agency executives conducted by market research firm Phocuswright at the end of last year showed that 78% of respondents said their total bookings to the United States had decreased compared to the same period of the previous year.
The latest data released by Statistics Canada shows that in December 2025, the number of Canadian residents returning home by air from the United States decreased by 18.7% compared to the same period last year, to 470,000; while the number of people returning by car has declined for the 12th consecutive month, plummeting by 30.7%. The number of U.S. residents arriving in Canada by air and by car also fell by 8.9% and 9% respectively compared to the same period last year. The ongoing impact of Canadian boycotts on the U.S. tourism industry has severely affected tourism in U.S. border cities.
A report written by the Democratic minority of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress last December showed that in 2024, Canadian tourists contributed $20.5 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 140,000 U.S. jobs. Meanwhile, the tense U.S.-Canada relations have caused significant losses for states near the U.S.-Canada border, such as Idaho, Maine, and Michigan.
In Vermont alone, according to calculations by Tourism Economics, a subsidiary of Oxford Economics, tourism accounts for 9% of the local economy, approximately $4.1 billion. Local officials stated that the decrease in Canadian tourists has resulted in a revenue loss of approximately $75 million last year. To win back lost customers, hotels and resorts are taking various measures, such as offering booking discounts, accepting Canadian dollars at a 1:1 exchange rate with the US dollar, and increasing French translation services, hoping to attract Canadians “angered” by Trump to stay. However, Tom Foley, head of business intelligence at Inntopia, is not optimistic.
“Trust has been broken and repairing it will be extremely difficult and may take a generation,” he said. “The U.S. tourism industry should not expect a short-term recovery in the Canadian market, and any business strategy must be re-planned over a 5 to 10-year cycle.”