
Skipping the U.S. and taking a vacation to East Coast this year? It will cost you.
Global News
Canadians are finding domestic travel increasingly unaffordable, with high costs for flights, rentals, and hotels forcing some to scale back plans or stay closer to home.
In September 2024, Natasha Beitman Brener and her husband decided to take a three-week vacation to Canada’s East Coast.
Beitman Brener, a lawyer in Kingston, Ont., spent about six months planning the trip, looking at various options to stay in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
“We are young, we don’t have all the money in the world, we have a mortgage. So we went on this trip and we thought, ‘oh, this will be affordable compared to something like Japan’ . … We were going to cook our own food,” she said in a recent interview.
They rented a recreational vehicle in Montreal for about $6,000, and between campground parking fees, gasoline, groceries, park passes, a round of golf, and a couple of dinners out, Beitman Brener said the total added up to $15,000.
“It was the most incredible trip. We loved it. It was worth it. It was incredible. The East Coast is so extraordinary,” she said. “But it was $15,000 and we talked to our friend — they went to Japan for three weeks for the same price, with flights. And I said to my husband, ‘well, we could have gone to Japan for the same price.'”
This year, as a trade war grinds on with the United States, Canadians who decide to vacation within their country are realizing their patriotism comes with a hefty price tag — and some are choosing to scale back their plans.
For Alick Tsui, a St. John’s, N.L., resident, a recent five-day, two-person trip to Port Rexton, N.L., cost him about $3,000. He is avoiding spending his dollars in the United States because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war and comments of annexing Canada.
But high prices are forcing him to cut costs for future trips in Canada. “Before I would stay for four nights, now I may cut it down to three nights. But that won’t change my plan to travel.”













