Foreign beaches are replacing saguaros as Canadians' preferred winter view.
Canadian tourism to Arizona fell 22% in 2025, not to the record lows seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, but still a dramatic drop.
About 664,000 Canadians visited Arizona in 2025, about 188,000 fewer people than in 2024, according to new data from the Arizona Office of Tourism, the state's tourism research and marketing resource.
The state's new preliminary data expands the picture of the impact that Canadian boycotts on tourism to the U.S. had on Arizona, a key market for snowbirds looking to escape Canada's cold winters.
Several airlines reduced service to the U.S. and expanded flights to Mexico and the Caribbean.
Data from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport showed a dip in traffic aboard Canadian airlines. Airport officials cited this decline as a significant reason why the airport's overall passenger traffic fell 1.3% in 2025 following a record year of more than 50 million passengers in 2024.
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How many Canadians visit Arizona?
Arizona welcomed about 664,000 Canadian visitors in 2025, according to the Arizona Office of Tourism. That's 22% fewer visitors compared to 2024 and a far cry from the record 975,000 Canadians that visited in 2018. However, it's more than double the pandemic low of 257,400 visitors in 2020.
The declines in Canadian visits to Arizona were apparent even in good news for state tourism.
International travel at Sky Harbor is improving from 2025, with strong interest in the new China Airlines and Starlux Airlines flights to Taiwan offsetting the drops in Canadian travel, Phoenix Aviation Director Chad Makovsky said in a recent Phoenix Aviation Advisory Board meeting.
Overall international visitation to Arizona grew to about 5.38 million in 2025, a modest increase of 1.2%, despite the losses in Canadian visitors, according to AOT. Arizona has the fifth-largest share of international travelers in the U.S., surpassed only by California, New York, Florida and Texas, according to Tourism Economics.
March 2026 marked Sky Harbor's all-time busiest month with 5.1 million passengers flying in and out of the airport. But only 78,590 of them flew on routes to Canada, down from 115,430 passengers in March 2025, airport data showed. That same month, Canadian carrier WestJet saw a 40% drop in Sky Harbor traffic, mostly from fewer passengers deplaning in Phoenix from Canada.
Why are fewer Canadians visiting Arizona?
Arizona Office of Tourism staff cited policy sensitivity, economic pressures and competition from other destinations as the reasons for the drop in Canadian visitors in 2025.
Experts attribute the declining demand for Canadian tourist visits to the U.S. in part to Canadian travelers' negative sentiment of President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods and his calls to annex Canada as the 51st state. Some Canadians are also avoiding U.S. travel because the Canadian dollar is weak against the U.S. dollar.
Nationwide, many U.S. airports have lost routes to Canada because of lower demand from Canadian travelers and snowbirds. Many Canadian airlines have refocused their winter schedules on routes to Mexico and the Caribbean to meet greater demand from Canadians for those flights.
Can you still fly to Canada from Phoenix?
Other than losing seasonal service from budget carrier Flair Airlines, Canadian carriers have mostly spared Phoenix routes from the chopping block.
Nationwide, Canadian carriers reduced capacity on routes to and from the U.S. by about 10%, with East Coast and Midwest airports most likely to lose routes, said Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of passenger rights company AirHelp. For instance, there were 65% fewer flights between Montreal and New York City in 2025 than there were in 2024.
While most Canadian routes from Phoenix remain intact, airlines reduced the frequency of flights. WestJet cut summer flights to Vancouver, British Columbia and Edmonton, Alberta; airline spokeswoman Julia Kaiser said WestJet saw "no indication" that slower demand for Canadian travel to the U.S. would recover in the near future.
Low-cost carrier Porter Airlines, which launched service out of Sky Harbor in October 2024 with year-round flights to Toronto, is the only Canadian airline to add routes between Phoenix and Canada since January 2025. It introduced seasonal service to Vancouver and Ottawa, Ontario for the winter 2026 season.
Vancouver flights will return for winter 2027, which will also include new seasonal routes to Calgary and Edmonton, both in Alberta.
Porter is the only Canadian carrier with passenger growth at Sky Harbor over the last three months, airport data showed.
What's next for Canadian tourism in Arizona?
Evidence suggests the declines will extend into 2026.
From January to March, about 3.5 million Canadians returned from travel to the U.S. via automobile, about 600,000 fewer than the first three months of 2025 and about 1.7 million fewer than the first three months of 2024, according to Statistics Canada.
The number of Canadians who flew to return from U.S. travel dropped as well. About 1.6 million Canadians returned by air from January to March, about 300,000 fewer than January-March 2025 and about 600,000 fewer than January-March 2024, according to Statistics Canada.
Canadian airlines welcomed 228,545 passengers in the first three months of 2026, down from 304,492 passengers during the same period in 2025, Sky Harbor data showed.
State tourism officials expect Canadian tourism to Arizona won't recover until 2029 — the year that Trump's second term will end. But they said it's an improvement from earlier projections that the declines wouldn't be reversed until 2030.
Glenn Williamson, CEO and chief research officer of the Canada Arizona Business Council, anticipates about 20% fewer Canadians will visit Arizona in the 2025-26 season.
Short-term visitors who stay for 30 days or fewer, plus snowbirds who stay 31 days or longer, are both critical to Arizona's economy. Williamson estimates their total annual economic contribution in Arizona is at least $2.4 billion.
"This scale rivals the economic output of several Arizona counties and approaches that of major export-driven industries, yet it arrives without subsidies, incentive packages or publicly funded recruitment efforts," he said in a February report.
WestJet's reduction in nonstop service between Canada and Phoenix over the summer months seemed like "doing the right thing" because fewer people visit in the summer with Arizona's triple-digit temperatures, Williamson said.
But he thinks fewer direct service options won't deter Canadians who want to visit.
"There is a direct flight slowdown," he said. "But Canadian visitors are finding other flight combinations to still come to Arizona."
