The number of Canadians staying at Airbnbs in the US dropped sharply last month, according to new data from AirDNA, a site that analyzes the short-term-rental market.
In March, there was a 12.1% decrease in nights booked by Canadian travelers compared to March 2024.
Canadians have been pulling back on travel to the US in response to growing tensions between the two countries over tariffs announced in January by President Donald Trump.
The short-term rental market as a whole stayed steady in March, with average revenue per listing rising 1.3% compared to last year. Canadian travelers make up only a small portion of the overall US short-term rental market, with just 2.6% of all bookings last year.
It is unclear whether the decline recorded in March will persist in April and beyond. Canadians booked US short-term rentals at slightly higher rates in January and February 2025 compared to the same months in 2024.
However, Canadians hold a greater market share in certain destinations close to the US’ northern border, including Buffalo, New York, and Bellingham, Washington, along with popular destinations for snowbirds, like Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“It may not affect the industry uniformly, but some places are going to see more impacts,” AirDNA economist Bram Gallagher told Business Insider.
Airbnb declined to comment.
Some Canadians are canceling trips to the US and expressing their patriotism
In February, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraged Canadians to reconsider travel plans to the US and instead support domestic tourism.
It seems some Canadians have heeded his call.
The number of Canadians driving to the US in February fell 23% compared to the previous year, according to Statistics Canada data. In March, travel firm OAG said bookings on flights to the US from Canada had dropped more than 70% year-over-year for April through September.
In Palm Springs, California, Airbnb host Robert Carlson told Business Insider in March that a longtime, regular Canadian guest abruptly left his California vacation in March and canceled an upcoming $7,000 reservation.
“I’m having real trouble sleeping here right now. I’m cutting my stay short and am going home to Canada,” he wrote in an email to Carlson.
Carlson worried that a Canadian couple with a $17,000 reservation later in the year might follow suit.
The US Travel Association estimated that a 10% decrease in Canadian travel could result in 14,000 job losses and $2.1 billion in lost spending in 2025.
Some Canadians, meanwhile, are feeling a sense of strong sense of national pride. Toronto consultant Dylan Lobo told Business Insider there’s been a massive spike in traffic on his website, Made in CA, an online directory of Canadian-made goods.
Since January, there have been days when site traffic tripled overnight. The biggest surge came on February 1, when Trump imposed 25% tariffs on most Canadian goods, and traffic reached 100,000-plus visitors, he said. BI couldn’t independently verify Made in CA’s readership.
“There’s a lot of patriotism right now in this country,” Lobo said.
Worried Airbnb hosts in the US could promote themselves as sympathetic to Canadian travelers, Gallagher, of AirDNA, suggested.
“It could turn into something you market around, expressing solidarity for Canadian visitors,” he said.
Axel Springer, Insider Inc.’s parent company, is an investor in Airbnb.
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