Unlocking Travel: Canadians Head to the US as Land Borders Reopen

On October 13th, the US announced that land borders will open to vaccinated visitors from Canada and Mexico. Prior to this announcement, visitors from both countries could arrive by air. However, given that most visitors from both countries typically arrive to the US by land, this announcement marks a massive boon for US tourism. Basic facts about Canada:

2019 statistics show that 75% of Canadian visits to the US were by car (roughly 32 million trips).
Two-thirds of Canada's 38 million residents live within 60 miles of the land border.

Basic facts about Mexico:

In 2019, 85% of visitors from Mexico were by car (around 15 million people).

As of October 16th, Sojern's travel data shows that the announcement did not have a significant impact on flight searches from Canada or Mexico to the US. However, we see a big surge in hotel searches from Canada to the US and a small but noticeable increase from Mexico to the US.The hotel searches that occurred between October 13-15 compared against the same days of the prior week (October 6-8) shows that Canada’s increased by 74.5% while Mexico’s increased by 7.4%.

The daily hotel searches show the sudden surge, especially from Canada:

When broken out by state, we expected that the highest increases in travel intent from Canadians would be mostly across the northern part of the US. This was particularly true for Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Michigan. However, we were excited to see that there was significant lift across almost all US states.

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Percent Change in Hotel Searches From Canada to USComparison Dates: October 13-15 vs October 6-8

Here are a few examples of the northern and southern states daily hotel searches from Canada:

Increases in hotel searches from Mexico to the US were mainly experienced in the southwestern states plus Texas.The table below shows the states that had a noticeable change in searches since the US announcement on October 13th.

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Mexico to US hotel Searches, Oct 13-15 vs Oct 6-8

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As Land Borders Reopen, Canadians Look to Come to the US