Canadian Business Travel Resilient Amid Escalating U.S. Trade Disputes
Air bookings by Canadian business travelers to the United States increased by 16.5 per cent year-over-year in August, according to one analysis, as corporate travel continues to run counter to the overall national trend of avoiding leisure trips south of the border.
The data, from business travel management firm Corporate Traveller Canada, show that air bookings for Canadian employees travelling to the U.S. increased 6 per cent overall year-to-date.
The upward trend reached its most recent peak last month when a last-minute breakdown of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations triggered a new volley of tariffs on $28-billion worth of Canadian goods and a “dollar-for-dollar” response from Ottawa.
“The reality of long-term contracts and people being in business with each other across the border is not going to change that quickly,” said Chris Lynes, president of Corporate Traveller for the Americas. “Travel is just something that they cannot afford not to do.”
Canadian holiday-makers, on the other hand, have pulled back from the border in droves. Leisure travel to the U.S. has dropped between 25 per cent and 30 per cent since the trade war began in 2025, according to Mr. Lynes.
Business travel has fluctuated somewhat over that span. In April, 2025, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump introduced his first round of punishing tariffs, corporate travel from Canada to the U.S. dipped 9.9 per cent year-over-year, after having risen 7.7 per cent in March. “Conferences were one that took a big hit upfront,” Mr. Lynes said as an example.
“Then we saw everyone say, okay … we’re going to keep going,” he said. “We have to have access to this market.”
Data from Statistics Canada point to a sharper drop in business travel south of the border in 2025, but a similarly rapid recovery by the first quarter of 2026, the latest quarter for which data are available.
Canadian business travel and meeting spending is projected to rise 4.3 per cent this year to $40.1-billion, according to April figures from the Global Business Travel Association. And many Canadian companies are continuing to invest in U.S. travel, with some having less choice in the matter than others.
The technology sector remains an especially major source of U.S.-bound corporate travel, Mr. Lynes said. Tech firms still rely heavily on raising capital in California and New York State, where investors in later-stage financing rounds require in-person pitch meetings to write million-dollar cheques.
The U.S. is also the single largest country for tech conferences, hosting some of the industry’s biggest events, such as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which draws in about 150,000 attendees annually.
For other sectors, including banking, natural resources and mining, “there’s still a large travel population that’s out there,” Mr. Lynes said.
In the retail sector, travel to the U.S. is often synonymous with business success. “New York has helped us to be discovered in Canada,” said Myriam Belzile-Maguire, co-founder and designer at Montreal-based Maguire shoes.
The company opened stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn prior to the trade war. Having a presence in New York’s fashion hub has helped increase the brand’s domestic visibility, by attracting tourists and influencers who advertise its products, she said. Although Canada remains Maguire’s biggest market, about 35 per cent of its sales now come from the U.S. Ironically, the trade war even drove some of that growth.
“We saw more sales over all on the Canada side because people were supporting Canadian businesses,” Ms. Belzile-Maguire said. “But we also saw more American clients that were panicked and were buying before their prices changed.”
Growing a U.S. presence in retail wouldn’t have been possible virtually. “We could have done a Zoom, but I want them to try the product, comment on it,” Ms. Belzile-Maguire said.
When it comes to hiring, “you always want to see the person,” she said, “make sure the person is not shy to interact with.”
Ms. Belzile-Maguire typically travels to New York every three to four months, but she’s made more frequent trips this year to hire staff. The rising costs of airfare and hotels, driven by higher fuel prices and exchange rates, have motivated her to stay longer and accomplish more on each trip.
For larger companies in some sectors, cutting American ties has been logistically easier, if not always convenient.
“We’ve cut off all travel to the U.S. at this point,” said Connie Stacey, chief executive and founder of Grengine, an Edmonton-based battery electronics manufacturer with a large presence in the defence sector.
Before Mr. Trump’s tariff threats, Ms. Stacey travelled to the country three times a year or more, largely for clean-technology conferences and supplier-diversity events hosted by major American corporations.
“There’s an increased value in shaking someone’s hand and meeting them in person,” particularly for high-value, high-risk transactions, Ms. Stacey said. “You get a chance to sit and build a relationship with some of those people, which in the long run is probably the biggest piece in developing a procurement channel.”
But the multiplying opportunities in Europe have made up for anything Grengine has missed out on in the U.S., said Ms. Stacey, who travelled overseas about five times between January and June alone.
While Canadian companies attending industry events overseas previously were sometimes overshadowed by their larger American neighbours, “it really changed in this past year,” she said. “The minute we arrived, it was like, ‘Oh my God, Canadians. We love Canadians.’”
Business travel northward also hasn’t shown signs of stopping, according to some. “We haven’t seen any slowdown at all,” said Josh Cameron, chief executive at Christopherson Business Travel, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, who’s seen a spike in business travel booking across both sides of the border.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
