Tourism Industry ScanMay 2026

The 2026 forecast sits at $140.9B, with 6.0% growth replacing the previous 5.4% projection. Tourism is expected to grow at 5.3% annually through 2030, against 3.7% for the broader Canadian economy. Overseas markets are the acceleration story, growing at 9.8% CAGR against 5.3% for the US.

By 2035, the non-US share of services export revenue is expected to climb from 50% to 60%. Tourism ranked in Canada's top three exports in 2025, contributing 13.1% of services exports, and is projected to deliver $27–30 billion (9–10%) toward the national goal of adding $300 billion in non-US exports by 2035. For DMOs, the practical effect is that tourism now has a stronger economic mandate from Ottawa than it has had at any point in the past decade.

SourceDestination Canada, Canadian Tourism Outlook 2026–2035

US arrivals by air rose 10.8% in April, automobile arrivals rose 6.1%, and Canadian return trips from the US increased 1.4% (largely a base-year effect, as return trips from the US by air actually fell 8.1% YoY, and compared to April 2024 Canadian return trips from the US are still down 30%). Overseas-resident trips to Canada slipped 3.1% YoY in the same month.

So the topline reads as a recovery, but the components tell three different stories: US inbound rebuilding, Canadian outbound to the US reorganizing, and overseas inbound (the segment most central to the ten-year forecast) softening this month. DMOs who set a 2025 strategy around the US decline being structural should now update that view in writing for their boards.

SourceStatistics Canada, Leading Indicator of International Arrivals, April 2026

65% of Canadian travellers say they actively avoid destinations known for extreme weather, 49% find weather-related decision-making stressful, and 53% say unpredictability makes it hard to know when to travel. The behavioural response is concrete: 46% of Canadians plan to avoid overcrowded destinations (up 18 points YoY), 48% plan to travel outside peak season (up 15 points), and 25% are seeking cooler destinations.

The supply side is feeling it too. Booking.com's parallel survey of 3,715 accommodation providers found 24% experienced operational disruption from extreme weather in 2025, and 40% of those have already adjusted operations in response. For Canadian DMOs in cooler-climate regions or regions with strong shoulder-season product, the audience is rebuilding itself around their offer.

SourceBooking.com, Travel & Sustainability Report 2026 (Canadian subset)

Awareness as a primary focus dropped from 59% in 2025 to 25% in 2026 globally. Display advertising usage fell from 75% to 45%. TikTok adoption among DMOs declined from 49% to 28%, with teams concentrating spend on channels that more clearly support measurable performance. AI adoption for content creation reached 66%, and AI for data analysis jumped from 28% to 51% in a single year.

Yet only 9% of DMOs describe their personalization capabilities as "advanced," meaning the tools are in widespread use but the strategic capability gap is widening between leaders and the rest. Sojern's research was supported by Destination Canada, Brand USA, the U.S. Travel Association, Destinations International, ETC, City DNA, the Caribbean Tourism Organization and PATA, which makes it the most authoritative DMO operational benchmark currently in market.

SourceSojern, State of Destination Marketing 2026

BrightEdge data shows Google's AI Overviews coverage grew 58% in the 12 months through February 2026. ChatGPT's search feature now triggers on 34.5% of queries (down from 46% in late 2024), which means most responses still rely on training data. Between 65% and 85% of ChatGPT prompts have no matching keyword in Semrush's database, which breaks the keyword research workflow most DMOs still use.

Brand USA's Chief AI Officer Janette Roush has been explicit about the operational implication: DMOs need to move past Top-10 lists toward content that addresses lesser-asked questions, the connections, neighbourhood feel, and contextual specificity that aren't already in Google's database. Destination Canada now includes a "Boost AI discoverability" instruction in the 2026–2035 Outlook and links operators to a Generative AI Search Playbook. PhocusWire's framing of the shift: DMOs are becoming structured travel providers for the AI ecosystem.

SourcesTravel Weekly · PhocusWire · Position Digital, 150+ AI SEO Statistics · Sojern, State of Destination Marketing 2026

The IAB's reclassification formalises something tourism marketers have been navigating informally for two or three years. Brands are shifting from one-off creator campaigns to always-on approaches that combine micro, affiliate, and performance-focused creators. Commerce media (the layer where creators tie content directly to bookings) hit $63.4 billion, up 18%.

Two structural forces are driving this: consumers are gravitating toward the human qualities of creators as feeds fill with AI-generated content of low quality, and platforms are formalising booking flows directly inside the discovery channel. TikTok began enabling in-app hotel bookings with Booking.com in late 2025. DataReportal's April Digital 2026 Mid-Year update confirms that social platforms have overtaken search engines and TV as the leading brand-discovery channel for the 16–34 age group. The instruction in last month's report to build a creator pipeline now sits inside an industry consensus that creators are a permanent media line item.

SourcesIAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report 2025 (via Marketing Dive) · DataReportal Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update