Canadians are boycotting American ski resorts to protest President Trump’s tariffs and threats to make the US’ northern neighbor the “51st State” – leading resort owners to panic over season passholder numbers, according to a new report.
Trump angered Canadians soon after his return to the Oval Office last year, when he slapped a steep 25% tariff on Canadian imports and repeatedly voiced the desire to annex the country — calls he renewed earlier this month amid his saber-rattling on Greenland.
Ski resorts from Maine to Montana have been hit hard as Canadians have avoided travel to the US and abandoned their season passes, Bloomberg reported.
As of last Thursday, Canadian bookings to American resorts for winter trips were down about 41% – far worse than a simultaneous 5% drop among US customers, according to Inntopia.
Vermont’s Jay Peak, which is just a few minutes south of the border with Quebec, typically gets more than half of its profits each year from Canadian guests, according to Steve Wright, the resort’s president and general manager.
But Canadian renewals for the 2025-26 season plunged 35% this year. Wright said he called about 100 season-pass holders to ask why they weren’t returning to the mountain this year.
“Many had tears and were choking up over the fact that they just couldn’t, in good conscience, come to the States,” Wright testified before Congress during a forum on Trump’s trade war.
As Canadians have started traveling within their country more, resorts have rushed to offer discounts on bookings, translate more of their messaging into French and even accept the weaker Canadian dollar on par with the US dollar.
Staffers at American properties have said they are working hard to counteract a negative perception of the US in their interactions with Canadian guests.
“Canadians are affronted by what feels like a betrayal by a longtime friend,” Tom Foley, Inntopia’s director of business intelligence, told Bloomberg.
Bookings at US resorts from Canadians tend to drop within just 48 hours of controversial statements from Trump, according to Inntopia data.
About 78% of Canadian travel agency owners and managers said their gross bookings to the US are down compared to the previous year, according to a late 2025 survey by Travel Weekly and Phocuswright.
“I felt kind of weirdly guilty” for renewing, said Eimar O’Leary-Barrett, a data analyst in Montreal, who typically holds a season pass at Jay Peak.
O’Leary-Barrett told Bloomberg that she ultimately renewed her pass because Vermont is a very liberal state.
Tourism accounts for 9% of gross domestic product in Vermont, compared to just 3% nationally, according to the Bloomberg report.
The drop in Canadian visits has cost the state roughly $75 million in revenue last year, according to local officials.
The city council even temporarily renamed the main shopping area in Burlington to “Canada Street” in an attempt to smooth over tensions.
But American resort owners won’t know if the season was a total bust until March, when Quebec and Ontario schools usually close for break and Canadians flock to US mountains, Bloomberg reported.
Wright said Jay Peak’s bookings from Canada are now down only 10% to 15%, which is better than it was earlier in the season.
“Maybe there are some Canadians who start to put that behind them,” Wright told Bloomberg of recent geopolitical tensions.
But it’s also likely that US resorts and hotels were helped by the snow-heavy season, as the resort saw 200 inches of snow before Christmas – the fastest it’s ever reached that level.
It’s unclear how the rest of the ski season will turn out as Trump continues to set his sights on taking over territory in Greenland, selling Venezuelan oil and ramping up tariffs on foreign nations.
O’Leary-Barrett decided not to renew her Jay Peak pass again next season.
“A level of trust has been broken that is going to be incredibly difficult, and may be generational, to recover,” Inntopia’s Foley told Bloomberg.
“I don’t think that in general US travel should be looking for a recovery from the Canadian market anytime soon.”
Credit: Source link
