Ottawa Business Journal

Both incoming and outgoing travel between Canada and overseas countries increased between April and May, although fewer travellers from the United States and abroad took trips to Canada on a year-over-year basis.

Canadians took 3.95 million trips abroad in May on a seasonally adjusted basis, an increase of 0.7 per cent over April's numbers.

Year-over-year, the amount of outgoing travel between Canada and other countries increased by 1.4 per cent to an unadjusted estimate of just over four million.

However, overseas travellers didn't return the favour, with 7.4 per cent fewer travellers taking trips to Canada from a year earlier. The total number of trips taken by both American travellers and those from other countries fell to an unadjusted 2.7 million.

The month-over-month figures were slightly more positive, with the total number of trips into Canada from foreign nationals rising by two per cent to a seasonally adjusted 2.6 million.

Canadians set another record for travel to overseas countries in May with a seasonally adjusted estimate of 606,000 trips, a 1.3-per-cent increase from the previous month. This was the third month since the beginning of the series in 1972 that the number of trips overseas by Canadians crossed the 600,000 mark, the Statistics Canada report said.

Travel by Canadian residents to overseas countries rose by 8.9 per cent year-over-year to an unadjusted 544 trips.

Canadians also took more than 3.3 million trips to the United States in May, an increase of 0.6 per cent from the previous month. On a year-over-year basis, this category rose by 0.3 per cent to an unadjusted 3.5 million trips.

Meanwhile, incoming travel to Canada from the United States fell by 8.8 per cent year-over-year and rose by 2.6 per cent from the previous month to 2.2 million trips in May. The trend was reversed for travel from other countries to Canada, which rose by one per cent from a year earlier to an unadjusted 418,000 trips and declined by 0.8 per cent between April and May to a seasonally adjusted 383,000 trips.

The largest month-over-month increase recorded among Canada's top 12 overseas markets was for South Korea, which saw a 6.3-per-cent increase in travel to Canada to 18,000 trips. The biggest decline, of 14.6 per cent, was observed in the Italian market, which took approximately 8,000 trips to Canada in May.

On a year-over-year basis, the largest gain was seen among travellers from India, who took 21.3 per cent more trips to Canada in May than they did a year earlier, at 14,000 trips. The biggest drop was the 21.5-per-cent decline to 29,000 trips for travellers coming in from Japan.