Steven Wright knew he had a downside lengthy earlier than the primary snowflake fell.
Wright, who runs the Jay Peak ski resort in northern Vermont, realized one thing was flawed final summer time whereas speaking to Canadian season move holders who had determined they wouldn’t be coming to the US — or his property — for the 2025-2026 winter ski season.
The political enmity between the US and Canada had reached a fever pitch, particularly as soon as President Trump started referring to Canada as “the 51st state,” and Jay Peak, situated simply 9 miles south of the Canadian border, was going to pay the value.
“I called hundreds of season pass holders, and to a house, they mentioned the ’51st state’ thing,” Wright stated in an interview with NCS.
He testified final yr in regards to the conversations to a US Senate committee, and he stated lots of the prospects “were choking up over the fact that they just couldn’t, in good conscience, come to the States.”
Beyond rhetoric in regards to the 51st state, Trump had additionally ignited a commerce battle, with the menace and actuality of stiff tariffs.
Jay Peak is arguably distinctive; 50% of its enterprise comes from Canada, which feels extra like a neighboring city than a overseas nation.
Many US ski resorts don’t rely as a lot on Canadian site visitors. And because the season has progressed, the exodus of Canadian guests has slowed considerably whereas the snowfall within the East has ramped up.
But Wright’s expertise illuminates what he calls the present plight of “the border economies,” encompassing many enterprise homeowners who reside and work close to the US-Canada frontier.
It additionally humanizes the repercussions of current commerce coverage: many Canadian residents are abandoning or severely curbing their years-long custom of visiting the US.
“We have a hockey arena — millions of dollars in hockey tournament business each year. We have a dozen restaurants on-site, conference space, wedding facilities. It all relies on Canadians to make it go,” he stated.
The blow to Wright’s enterprise and to different ski resorts within the Northeast and out West that rely upon Canadian vacationers comes at an uncommon second. Snowfall within the jap US this yr has reached blockbuster ranges. And a lot of the West has been affected by a snow drought.
While the variety of Canadian vacationers continues to lag within the US, many American ski resorts on the East Coast are heaving a sigh of aid. The huge quantity of snow falling on mountains this season is luring many American skiers, offsetting the Maple Leaf hiatus.
For Wright at Jay Peak, which has 81 trails, enterprise is now solely off 10% to fifteen%. But whereas he stated he’s happy after the season started with a a lot steeper decline, he has no illusions.
“Heavy snow has insulated us from the potential big downside of Canadian visitation. It has done so much to mitigate the situation with Canada,” he stated. “What happens when that snow melts?”
Canadians are staying away and so is the snow out West
The variety of Canadians re-entering Canada by automobile from the US was down each month final yr, in comparison with 2024, in line with Statistics Canada, the nationwide statistical workplace. In December alone, there was a 30% drop in site visitors from December 2024.
US National Travel and Tourism Office figures present a nearly 22% drop in customer arrivals to the US from Canada final yr via November, in contrast with 2024. Overall, worldwide journey to the US throughout that interval dipped by 5.4%. (Full 2025 figures are nonetheless being compiled).
The significance of Canada as a supply of vacationers — and tourism {dollars} — can’t be overestimated.
Canada is the biggest supply of worldwide guests to the US. More than 20 million Canadians visited the nation in 2024, in line with the U.S. Travel Association, producing $20.5 billion in spending, as NCS reported final yr.
But the snapshot out West is a extra sophisticated one to decipher. Unlike the East, ski resorts within the West are starved for snow so there are fewer guests from anyplace.
Vail Resorts, which operates about three dozen ski resorts in North America, together with Breckenridge in Colorado, Hunter Mountain in New York and Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, reported a 20% decline in visits from skiers thus far this season. The firm’s CEO, Rob Katz informed traders final month that it was “one of the worst early season snowfalls in the western US in over 30 years,” in line with a information launch.
The firm stated snowfall at its Western resorts was 50% beneath its 30-year historic common in November and December.
It’s not shocking then that bookings by Canadian vacationers at ski resorts out West had been down 41% final month, in line with the information agency Inntopia.
To make sure, ski resorts have diversified in current many years so many supply a host of different leisure actions — some tied to different winter sports activities, others fully snow-agnostic. For instance, some ski resorts have constructed indoor water parks.
Snow-making operations have additionally lengthy augmented what Mother Nature offers.
And some US ski resorts rely a lot much less on Canadian guests basically. For instance, the drop in Canadian visitation hasn’t damage Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Jeffersonville, Vermont, a lot.
“We are definitely off on our bookings of Canadian travelers as compared to other years — they come mostly from Ontario — but we don’t have to bank on there being a ton of Canadian travelers,” stated Matt McCawley, a spokesperson for the resort. “I think we are seeing more people traveling to Vermont, and I would assume it’s the same for New York and New Hampshire and Maine, just because of all that snow.”
By all accounts, the snow has been epic. McCawley says 200 inches have already fallen at his Vermont resort and he thinks a season report of over 400 inches is likely to be damaged.
“It’s like white gold,” he stated.
Other resorts are situated close to Canadian provinces much less vexed by the brand new political messages coming from the US. For instance, Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana attracts guests primarily from Alberta, the place a local separatist movement has discovered widespread trigger with the conservative MAGA motion within the US.
“Canadian visitation has always been a sizeable part of our business,” stated Chad Sokol, including there hasn’t been “a drastic drop.”
But past the ski resort, the city of Whitefish is seeing a sharp drop in Canadian guests.
According to knowledge collected by Explore Whitefish, the native tourism board, Canadian visitation fell almost 25% in 2025. The city is close to Glacier National Park.
In a written assertion, Explore Whitefish’s government director, Zak Anderson, famous visits from Canadian vacationers have lengthy been “a cornerstone of Whitefish’s winter economy.”
In the case of Montana and different locations, home vacationers have stepped in to shore up among the declines. What’s extra, political stress isn’t the one issue conserving Canadians at dwelling; the weak Canadian greenback can be partly responsible.
But property homeowners are already trying forward anxiously to the summer time when many resorts market themselves to Canadian mountain bikers, golfers and different out of doors lovers.
At Killington in central Vermont, for instance, the variety of Canadian guests who come to the resort for mountain biking was down double digits final summer time, spokesperson Josh Reed stated.
“It’s a huge piece of our summer business,” he stated. “Folks from Quebec are big into mountain biking.”
Reed spoke to many mountain bikers who skipped their summer time visits to the US final yr, and he stated they had been “extremely angry” over the political tensions.
Killington supplied reductions and there have been different incentives, together with a marketing campaign from the Vermont Mountain Bike Association, which hosted “Canadians Ride Free Day” in August, so the resort was capable of lure again among the prospects from Canada who had stayed away.
“By the end of the summer, we were hearing more French,” Reed stated, including it’s an anecdotal measure of 1 slice of Canadian tourism.
That supplied a respite for Killington and different tourism companies in Vermont. But it underscores the year-round nature of the issue even for ski resorts. They aren’t simply within the ski enterprise — they’re within the tourism enterprise.
“The entire state of Vermont is suffering,” Wright stated.
Border crossings by automobile between Vermont and Canada declined 27% in 2025, in line with statistics from the state of Vermont, which derives almost 10% of its gross home product from tourism.
It’s unclear how issues will play out this yr as a result of as many have identified, the Canadian exodus resulted from excess of merely the dialogue of tariffs. The rhetoric round annexing Canada and crowning it the 51st state rankled many Canadians, unearthing long-simmering tensions which have not abated. Just this week, President Trump threatened to dam the opening of a new bridge between the US and Ontario.
Once the snow melts at Jay Peak, hockey tournaments dominate the summer time schedule, and essentially the most compelling matchups are between hockey-loving Canadians and their American counterparts.
“If Canadians don’t show up, it hurts our American market, too, because the American teams want to play the Canadians,” he stated. “We don’t have a business then.”
That echoes a remark from an official with North Country Chamber of Commerce in Plattsburgh, New York.
“Our leisure travel market is about 70% Canadians — it’s a very large part of what we do,” Kristy Kennedy, vice chairman of selling and enterprise improvement for the North Country Chamber of Commerce in New York state, told NCS final yr.
Tourism operators proceed to roll out incentives geared toward Canadian vacationers, which may ultimately stem the tide. For instance, Minot, North Dakota, is one among a rising variety of cities the place some companies will settle for Canadian {dollars} “at par,” though the forex is weaker towards the American greenback proper now. (Even some casinos in Las Vegas have taken this extraordinary step of accepting Canadian loonies.)
The friendship between the 2 nations is a storied one and has endured many setbacks, observers say. The query is, how lengthy will the 2 mates stay estranged?
“This will roll back,” stated Wright at Jay Peak of the Canadian journey boycott. “But it will have a long tail for some Canadians.”