In the latest episode of You Came to the Right Place, TravelPulse Canada’s Natasha Lair and Jen Mallia sit down with Tania Kedikian, Vice President of Tourism at Development Counsellors International (DCI), to dig into new research on the Canadian traveller.
And there’s one number that’s hard to ignore.
In DCI’s 2023 research, roughly 40% of Canadians said they were considering the U.S. for a future trip. This year? Just 21%.
“That isn’t a dip. That is basically cut in half,” Kedikian says.
But the bigger story may be where Canadians are going instead.
“Three years ago, I would've defaulted to, ‘Let's just do Florida again.’ And now they're going, ‘Wait. What about Portugal? What about Mexico? Caribbean?’”
Tania Kedikian, VP of Tourism at DCI (Photo Credit: DCI)Canadians are also travelling farther, staying longer and looking for more than a beach chair — although nobody is suggesting we give up the beach chair.
The conversation covers the rise in long-haul travel, what affluent Canadians are spending, why experiences are increasingly winning over simple R&R, and the use of AI as a travel-planning tool.
And in The Pulse Check, Kedikian weighs in on the airplane behaviour she could do without and one travel trend she thinks we can finally stop talking about.
Listen to the latest episode of You Came to the Right Place here.
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