Canada wants to be in the top 10 global tourist destinations, but it struggles to get there

Canada has ambitious goals for post-pandemic tourism and has developed a new strategy to achieve them. However, experts say these goals will be difficult to achieve due to geopolitical challenges, the cost of travel in the country and climate change.

Canada is aiming to return to the world’s top 10 tourist destinations after slipping to 13th place on the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Development Index in 2021. Canada was ranked 11th on the index in 2024, but the federal government has set a target of seventh place by 2030.

In addition, it aims to increase annual tourism revenues from $140 billion to $160 billion and increase the sector’s contribution to Canada’s GDP by 40 percent.

But experts say it won’t be easy.

“The index is not about measuring the number of visitors coming to the country,” said Frederic Dimanche, director of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.

“Some of the criteria used are about safety, security, the quality of air transport, railways and other travel infrastructure. It is also about the attractions, the natural resources and cultural resources in the country.

“Canada has to improve itself, but it also depends on how well other countries do,” Dimanche added.

Destination Canada, the state-owned agency responsible for delivering Canada’s tourism goals, published a new strategy in June on what needs to be done to achieve those goals.

This strategy includes identifying key target groups, how to put Canada on the map, how to attract more business events and conferences, how to increase the labor supply and how to do all of this with an eye to environmental sustainability.

One of those target markets is East Asia, including China.

Tensions between Canada and China weigh on tourism

Relations between Canada and China remain tense. China has not reinstated Canada on its approved travel list.

“We know we’ve lost a lot of business from China,” Dimanche said. “Some operators have been severely affected by this. So if we can change that, that would be an improvement, but it’s not really something we can control.”

Overseas wars and conflicts also impact commercial air routes to Canada, and their availability and price. So while figures show that domestic travel in Canada has fully recovered post-pandemic, as has the number of Canadians travelling abroad, the number of foreigners travelling to Canada has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“The surge in demand among Canadian households for foreign destinations is not being matched to the same extent by foreign tourists coming to Canada,” said RBC economist Claire Fan, who recently authored a report on the problems facing Canada’s tourism sector.

“There is still a 10 percent gap and we found that this is mainly due to visitors who are not from East Asia. That includes China, Japan and South Korea,” Fan said.

Tour operators say they have certainly seen evidence of this.

“We still haven’t seen the Asian market completely come back to what it was,” said Etienne Cameron, co-owner of Lady Dive Tours, a bus and boat tour company in Ottawa.

He says it is a major setback that Canada is not on the China-approved list.

“We have noticed the impact. It is enormous. There are no large groups in the city anymore.”

Three-quarters of Canada’s tourism sector represents domestic demand and Fan believes that is where the government should focus.

But the travel industry is seen as an export sector because foreign travelers bring in new money, so foreigners remain a target group.

“It means more travelers coming, spending more money, staying longer and coming all year round,” said Federal Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada.

1.9 million Canadian jobs depend on tourism

According to government statistics, the tourism sector accounts for 1.9 million jobs across Canada, spread across the country.

“Tourism is an economic engine. It is actually more than just the automotive sector, the agricultural sector and the fishing sector,” said Martinez Ferrada.

Other obstacles include tense relations with India and Canada’s recently reintroduced visa requirements for visitors from Mexico.

But the cost of getting around a country as big as Canada is also a tough sell, especially if the country doesn’t offer fast rail connections or competitive airlines to keep prices low — deals that many smaller countries do have.

According to Martinez Ferrada, one of the components of the government’s tourism strategy is to invest more in transportation.

“If you want to go from Montreal to Vancouver and it costs you the same as going to Paris, people might say, ‘Maybe I’ll go to Paris.’ But if you go to Paris, the cost of staying in Paris is very high,” Martinez Ferrada said.

The government hopes that tourism can grow through more visits from family and friends from abroad, given increasing immigration into Canada.

There is also a growing demand among foreigners for tourism based on the indigenous population.

But there is another challenge: the increasing impact of climate change.

For example, forest fires threaten the country’s reputation because newspapers around the world write that “Canada is on fire,” while it is only a few regions and not the entire country.

“Climate change is a new topic for us as a sector,” said Martinez Ferrada.

“We are not only addressing the threat of climate change, but we are also addressing, for example, if we have to evacuate. How do we evacuate tourists from a region?”

However, climate change and a river that stays unfrozen longer could also lead to an extended tourist season for Ottawa’s Lady Dive Amphibus.

“I’m not necessarily worried that we’re not going to get back to where we were,” Cameron said. “I just think we need to focus more on building relationships with other countries, putting more money into tourism and really showcasing Canada and how great it is.”