People walk towards Rod Robbie Bridge near Front St/John St in downtown Toronto on March 6.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
Before the pandemic, Canada welcomed roughly 750,000 visitors a year from China, who collectively spent nearly $2-billion on hotels, meals and other items during their stays. Today, arrivals are nowhere close to what they were.
In 2023, there were around 225,000 Chinese visitors to the country, according to figures from Statistics Canada. While that was up sharply from the year before, it was still less than one-third of peak volumes in 2018 and 2019.
Canada is not in a unique position. The Chinese government pursued a zero-COVID policy of heavy restrictions, and many of its travel rules were only lifted in early 2023. Chinese citizens spent US$120-billion on outbound travel last year – a decline of 52 per cent from 2019, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Now, a slowing domestic economy could prevent Chinese consumers from returning to their old spending habits, hindering the tourism industry’s efforts to recover from the pandemic.
Still, Canada is facing particular troubles that are prolonging a rebound in visits. There has been a sharp drop in direct flight service between the countries, and since China eased its pandemic restrictions on outbound travel, it has not put Canada on its list of approved destinations for group tours – a decision that reflects heightened diplomatic tensions.
Destination Canada, a Crown corporation that promotes the country to overseas markets, doesn’t project a recovery in Chinese visitors until 2027.
“It’s one thing or another these last four years,” said Kiefer Van Mulligen, a research associate at the Conference Board of Canada. The loss of Chinese tourism spending “does have a negative impact” on the economy.
Four years after the pandemic started, flight service between Canada and China is limited. In March, there are 41 flights scheduled between the countries, down 91 per cent from the same month in 2019, according to data provided by Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
A complication is that Russia has barred Ukraine’s allies – including Canada, the United States and Britain – from flying their aircraft over its airspace, which lengthens certain long-haul routes into and out of China and renders them more expensive to operate. For this reason, some airlines have cancelled routes into East Asia.
“It’s difficult to have flights from Eastern Canada – in Toronto and Montreal, primarily – to China without using a Russia overflight,” Michael Rousseau, the chief executive officer at Air Canada, said in an earnings call last August. “We’d like to see that market come back.”
Since travel restrictions were eased, China has added dozens of countries to its “approved destination status” list of places it allows tour groups to visit, including Australia, Britain and the U.S. However, Canada is a notable omission. It had previously been on the list from 2010 until the pandemic, which, combined with an expanding middle class in China, led to a sharp rise in tourist arrivals last decade.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa pointed to allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections as one of the reasons for the omission.
“Lately, the Canadian side has repeatedly hyped up the so-called ‘Chinese interference,’ and rampant and discriminatory anti-Asian acts and words are rising significantly in Canada,” the embassy said in a statement. “The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safety and legitimate rights of overseas Chinese citizens and wishes they can travel in a safe and friendly environment.”
Alexander Cohen, a spokesperson for federal tourism minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada, pushed back on this characterization of Canada as an unsafe destination.
“Canada is one of the safest countries in the world – one of the many reasons why millions of tourists visit here every year,” he said in a statement, noting that individual Chinese tourists are still able to visit Canada. “The Government of Canada continues to engage with Chinese officials to resolve issues around Approved Destination Status.”
Janice Thomson, the president and chief executive officer of Niagara Falls Tourism, said the loss of Chinese tourists was noticeable in her region. They are “an appreciable and important part of our visitation, especially in the spring and summer with groups,” she said.
Over all, the Canadian tourism industry is still getting back on its feet. Tourism spending in Canada is down from prepandemic levels, both for domestic and international travellers, according to Statscan data.
Today, the industry accounts for 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product, down from 2 per cent before the pandemic. It “sounds small, but it’s actually quite significant,” Mr. Van Mulligen said. “It supports lots of jobs.”
The Chinese market is a particularly big loss. Chinese travellers used to be the No. 3 source of arrivals, behind the U.S. and Britain, and were the No. 2 spenders in overall dollar terms.
Chinese leisure visitors to Canada spent an average of $2,900 per trip in 2019 and stayed an average of 44 nights, according to Destination Canada. This included people visiting friends and family for extended periods.
Alice Lin, the executive director of CAL Travel & Tours in Richmond, B.C., which offers tours across North America, is feeling the effects. About 40 per cent of her clients used to be from China. Now she’s leaning on her other key markets (Taiwan and Southeast Asia) to pick up the slack.
“We lost China, but we still can survive,” she said. “Tourism is very sensitive.”