Domestic travel continued to boom while

travel

to the United States declined as Canadians chose destinations closer to home in the first half of the year, according to vacation rental company

Airbnb Inc.

The short-term-stay booking platform said reservations within the country jumped by more than 10 per cent in the first six months of 2025 compared with 2024.

“The momentum in domestic travel has real staying power,” Airbnb said in a

press release

. “Travellers are choosing to explore closer to home, spending their travel dollars locally and supporting Canadian hosts, small businesses and communities in doing so.”

Hannah Parish, Airbnb’s recently-appointed country manager for Canada, said the trend in domestic travel growth shows no signs of abating heading into the latter part of the summer.

Airbnb’s data show a nationwide surge in domestic travel, with higher numbers in nearly every province and territory this year. Smaller towns and rural communities are attracting more visitors, the company said, spreading the economic benefits of tourism beyond major hubs.

Airbnb is available in 50 per cent more postal codes than hotels in the country, Parish said, adding that Canadians are “travelling to communities where they maybe haven’t spent much time before.”

Small towns and some provinces had big gains in the first half of 2025. Domestic bookings were up by more than 20 per cent year-over-year in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan, according to Airbnb data.

Parish said the vast majority of reservations by Canadians have always been domestic, with the company’s historical data showing about 70 per cent of Canadian clients book within Canada.

“A 10 per cent increase within Canada when Canadians are already travelling at home a lot is really significant, and I actually look at that as the key indicator of health,” she said.

In June, the company said its analysis estimated that Airbnb–related travel generated

nearly $10.8 billion

in economic activity across Canada in 2024.

Canadians are also showing more appetite for non-U.S. international trips, with a nearly double-digit increase in bookings to alternative destinations compared to the first half of 2024 to countries such as Japan, Brazil, France, the Philippines, Thailand and Mexico have grown by double digits, it said.

In April, Airbnb released data that showed Canadian

searches for domestic stays

for all dates in 2025 had jumped approximately 20 per cent compared to the previous year.

Meanwhile, Parish said Airbnb has seen a double-digit decline in Canadian travel to the U.S., which accounts for less than 10 per cent of that country’s inbound visits. Domestic travel is the top segment for both the Canadian and U.S. markets.

“Canadians used to travel a lot to the U.S. (And) we are seeing declines that are sort of in line with what you’re seeing (from) Statistics Canada,” she said.

Statistics Canada’s latest monthly data on international arrivals to Canada, released on 

Aug. 11

, showed a 25.8 per cent decline in the number of returning Canadian-resident trips by air from the U.S., and a 36.9 per cent decline by automobile in July compared to the same month in 2024. July 2025 marked the seventh-consecutive month of year-over-year declines, the agency said.

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Its 

national travel survey,

released on Aug. 25, said Canadian residents took 6.1 million trips that included an outbound visit to the U.S. in the first quarter of 2025, down 10.8 per cent year over year.

Expenditures during visits to the U.S. totalled $5.7 billion, a decline of 7.9 per cent from the first quarter of 2024, it said.

• Email: dpaglinawan@postmedia.com