Canadian Personal Finance Blog

So tourism spending in Canada is up 1.0% over the same period last year, which is a good thing, because tourism is one of the things that Canada does (all those rich Americans and their Yankee dollars coming up to buy stuff), but I guess thanks to a very strong Canadian dollar (relatively speaking that is, I remember when the Canadian dollar was worth MORE than it’s American counterpart, but that just shows how old I am), International tourism spending in Canada is lower by 2.8% .The number of American visitors dropped by 3.9% and the number of day trips by our American cousins is down sharply.

Please come back American friends, we need your cash! Given the abominable snow conditions around Ottawa and Montreal, tourism for ski’ing is going to be pretty darn poor this year too (although instead of having the world’s longest skating rink Ottawa could open the canal for swimming maybe?).

The importance of tourism to Canadians cannot be easily discounted, and it is a major contributor to the Canadian “bottom line” so it is important to promote Canada as a great place to come for vacations, like skating on the World’s Longest Skating rink in Ottawa.