California is doing the tourism equivalent of holding a boombox up to the window to woo back one of its most important visitor groups: Canadians.
With forecast data showing that our neighbors to the north have started eschewing travel to the U.S., the statewide tourism organization on Tuesday will start promoting Expedia discounts and a new video ad dubbed “California Loves Canada,” meant to reignite the romance.
The campaign is intended to “build pride, connection, and goodwill at a time when those emotions are in short supply,” Visit California CEO Caroline Beteta said on a conference call Monday.
It’s just one strategy the state is rolling out to try to stanch its international tourism bleedout. California’s five-year streak of increasing tourism since the pandemic has crashed headfirst into the Trump slump, Visit California announced Monday, predicting a nearly 1% decline in overall visitor volume in 2025, driven mainly by a 9.2% plunge in international visitors.
“The political and economic climate in the U.S. is creating new sentiment barriers to travel, including the impacts of federal tariff policies,” said Beteta.
The biggest dive in international travel comes from both the north and south: Visit California expects 20% fewer Canadian tourists this year and nearly 12% fewer Mexicans.
Their reluctance to grace the Golden State has “a profound impact on the overall health of California’s tourism economy,” she said, with the gateway cities of San Francisco and L.A. suffering most.
The organization’s research blames the downturn on a mix of sentiment (read: would-be visitors pissed off by White House policies), concerns about security and safety, and economic pressures. In other words, some tourists are boycotting the U.S., some are canceling trips because of border crossing anxiety, and some can’t afford it because of the relative strength of the dollar.
While international visitor numbers are expected to plummet, domestic tourism will stay relatively flat, Visit California predicted. Travelers from within the U.S. generally account for more than 80% of visitor spending in the state every year.
That would be a bright spot, except that the looming threat of a recession could throw those numbers into a tailspin and cause “even steeper declines in projections,” Beteta said.
She urged California residents to plan their vacations locally and spend on “exploring our own backyard.”
In San Francisco, meanwhile, a busy conference and events calendar is keeping tourism executives from panicking — so far.
Anna Marie Presutti, CEO of SF Travel, said recently that she has “cautious optimism” about the city’s prospects. She’s hoping that SF’s reputation as a “welcoming city” could blunt the impacts of the overall downturn in international visitors.
“We’re not going to feel the impacts until the latter part of the summer or early fall,” she said. “I think it’s coming; we just don’t know what the impact will be.”
Another potential wrinkle emerged this weekend as President Donald Trump debuted his vision of converting Alcatraz back into a working prison. That, of course, could kill off one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations, which gets more than 1.4 million visitors each year.