Canada wants to be in the top 10 global tourism destinations — but it's struggling to get there

Canada has set ambitious post-pandemic tourism targets and has a new strategy to meet them, but experts say geopolitical challenges, cost of travel in the country and climate change will make those goals difficult to achieve.

Canada's goal is to get back into the top 10 tourist destinations in the world, after falling to 13th in 2021 on the World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Development Index. Canada was 11th on the 2024 index, but the federal government has set a goal of seventh by 2030.

It also wants to increase annual tourism revenues from $140 billion to $160 billion and to boost the sector's contribution to Canada's GDP by 40 per cent.

But experts say it won't be easy.

"The index is not about measuring the number of visitors coming to the country," said Frederic Dimanche, the director of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.

"Some of the criteria being used are about safety, security, the quality of air transport, railroad and other travel infrastructure. It's also about the attractions, the natural resources and cultural resources in the country.

"Canada has to improve on its own, but also it depends on how well the other countries are doing," Dimanche added.

Destination Canada, the Crown corporation tasked with reaching Canada's tourism goals, released a new strategy in June on what needs to be done to get there.

That strategy includes identifying the top target audiences, how to brand Canada, how to attract more business events and conventions, how to increase labour supply and how to do it all with environmental sustainability in mind.

One of those target markets is East Asia, including China.

The Canada-China relationship is still fraught. China has not put Canada back on its list of approved tours.

"We know that we've lost a lot of business from China," said Dimanche. "Some operators have been badly affected by this. So if we can change that, it would be for the better, but it's not really something that we can control."

Overseas wars and conflicts also affect commercial air routes to Canada, and their availability and price. So while numbers show domestic travel in Canada has fully rebounded after the pandemic, as has the number of Canadians going overseas, the number of foreigners travelling to Canada has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

"The rebound in demand among Canadian households to foreign destinations has not been reciprocated to the same extent by foreign visitors coming to Canada," said RBC economist Claire Fan, who authored a recent report on the struggles the tourism sector in Canada is facing.