Canadians spend record $20B on holiday trips

Canadians spent a record amount of money while on holiday in 2006, making an estimated 22.7 million overnight trips, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

For overnight travel, Canadian travellers spent an unprecedented $20.1 billion, with Mexico as their top overseas getaway destination, the federal agency said in its report. In total, Canadians made an estimated 842,000 trips to Mexico, an increase of six per cent over 2005.

By comparison, travel to the United Kingdom dropped to 778,000 trips, a decline of 13.4 per cent over the previous year. The federal agency said there was a noticeable decline in trips to the U.K. in the month of August, after British police announced they had foiled a plot to blow up commercial aircraft from London's Heathrow Airport en route to the United States.

Travel from Canada to China spiked 55.7 per cent, an increase in part attributed to more airlines offering service between the two countries. Travel from China to Canada increased 22.8 per cent.

Meanwhile, travel to Italy represented the largest overseas decline at 315,000 overnight visits, a decrease of 17.7 per cent.

New York held its position as the most popular overnight U.S. destination, with Canadians making more than 2.6 million trips to the statein 2006. Florida at 2.1 million overnight visits followed closely behind and Washington, Michigan and California rounded out the top five.

Fewer Americans visited Canada in 2006

While travel from Canada to the U.S. increased to 16 million trips the highest level since 1993 fewer Americans visited Canada. As the Canadian dollar strengthened, averaging 88.2cents US in 2006, travel from the U.S. to Canada dropped by 3.7 per cent to 13.9 million visits.

"There were also declines in every major trip purpose category for overnight travel to Canada," the federal agency said in a release.

"U.S. residents took almost 2.8 million trips to Canada to visit friends and relatives, down 2.5 per cent from 2005. The largest category, pleasure trips, also declined 2.2 per cent to just under 8 million trips."

The federal agency also recorded declinesin trips from other countries, including the U.K., Canada's top overseas tourism market. In 2006, residents of the U.K. made 842,000 trips, a drop of 5.2 per cent over last year.