Record number of Canadian travellers stayed closer to home in 2023

A record number of Canadian travellers decided to keep it local rather than book a trip overseas in 2023.

Room booking platform Airbnb found it had a record number of Canadians travelling domestically in 2023, according to a new report.

There were nearly eight million domestic guest arrivals last year, an increase of nearly 30 percent since 2019.

“It was an unprecedented year of exploration on Airbnb across Canada in 2023, with a record number of Canadians travelling domestically on the platform,” the report states.

This partially matches what Statistics Canada found in its National Travel Survey report released in November 2023.

Statistics Canada found that in the second quarter of 2023 (April to June), Canadian residents took 70.2 million domestic trips, up by 5.2 million from the second quarter of 2022 and 4.7 per cent more than in the same quarter in 2019.

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Domestic travel accounted for 89.6 per cent of all travel by Canadian residents in the second quarter, surpassing the proportion seen in the same quarter of 2019 (87.1 per cent).

However, it is down from April to June 2022 when 92 per cent of all travel was domestic travel by Canadians — likely due to ongoing concerns about the pandemic.

Overall, Airbnb found travellers booking stays across Canada. Over 1,700 Canadian cities and towns welcomed guests, making it the most dispersed year of travel in Canada on the platform, the report states.

And in 2023, nearly 40 Canadian cities and towns welcomed their first guests, the overwhelming majority of which were non-urban destinations (approximately 95 per cent).

The Owls Perch is a unique stay on Vancouver Island. (Photo: Airbnb)

New spots included the border town of Centreville, New Brunswick and the self-proclaimed lily capital of the world, Neepawa, Manitoba.

In Canada, some of the most booked, affordable (average daily rate of USD $100 or less) destinations in 2023 included Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kitchener, Ontario, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Gatineau, Quebec, and Prince George, British Columbia, Airbnb found.

For more information, see the report from Airbnb here.

(Lead photo: Saskatoon by Mukesh Tanna)