The Greater Palm Springs region is feeling the drop-off in Canadian travelers and is hoping to win them back.
Canadian travelers tend to have their favorite destinations. In the United States, sun destinations in California, Arizona, and Florida are some of their top spots.
At many of the destinations, Canadians are just one of the sources of international visitors, but for Palm Springs, California, they make up significant proportion of annual visitor numbers—in the hundreds of thousands, by some estimates.
Now, facing the loss of those visitors as Canadians look to other domestic and international destinations, city officials are working to ensure the remaining Canadian visitors know they’re welcome and appreciated, and the city wants their business.
Earlier this month, the city installed banners on the streets and at the airport reading “Palm Springs (hearts) Canada” to make their message clear.
“It was a gesture to let our Canadian visitors know that what happens in Washington, D.C., is not the way that Palm Springs is looking at Canada,” Palm Springs mayor Ron deHarte told The Guardian.
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That banners were the idea of Keith McCormick, the owner of Palm Springs Exotic Car Auctions.
“The atmosphere in town is one of anxiety that our tourist[s] fear they might not be allowed to return over the border,” McCormick told SF Gate.
Two Canadian airlines, WestJet and Flair Airlines, ended their seasonal flying to Palm Springs International Airport (PSP) early this year. WestJet dropped flights a month earlier than normal, and Flair ended service for the year three weeks early. Both carriers cited a significant drop in demand as reasoning behind the decision. Overall, Canadian carriers have trimmed flying to other cities in the U.S. for similar reasons.
“As a result of the current political environment, we have seen a downward shift in demand for trans-border bookings between Canada and the U.S.,” a spokesperson for WestJet told The Guardian. “Notably, we are seeing increased demand for sun destinations across Mexico and the Caribbean, and to Europe.”
That’s not good news for Palm Springs, where Canadian visitors—some two-thirds of whom arrive by air—tend to stay longer and spend more in the city than U.S. visitors, who largely come on shorter weekend trips.
It may also be an overreaction to pin the hopes of inbound Canadian travelers on just two airlines making changes to their Palm Springs schedules. It’s worth noting that Canadians who wish to visit Palm Springs aren’t completely out of luck—Air Canada is still operating flights, and so are U.S. carriers, although those require a change of aircraft in another U.S. city. Palm Springs is also convenient to other nearby airports: it’s about an hour from Ontario International Airport (ONT) depending on traffic, and just over two hours from other airports in the Los Angeles area.
Palm Springs also has another ally on its side: time. Located in one of the hottest desert regions in the country, where temperatures soar during the summer months, Palm Springs and the surrounding desert communities of Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Desert Hot Springs, Indio, and La Quinta often see a significant drop in visitors in the summer trough season. This gives transborder tensions some time to cool off before the next tourism season, which in Palm Springs picks back up in the fall and peaks from January to April.
Visitors come for interesting history and architecture (there’s a wealth of art deco and midcentury modern buildings), natural beauty, golf, and sunshine in a scenic desert watered by natural springs and snowmelt from the San Jacinto Mountains.
The destination has long been popular with Californians and visitors from the Pacific Northwest, but Canadian visitor numbers have seen steady increases over the past decades. The last study by local tourism promoters specific to Canadian visitors was in 2017, which tracked roughly 10% in annual growth for the previous years.
Spurred by tariffs and President Donald Trump’s threats to annex the country, Canadians have responded with a grassroots patriotic movement, Elbows Up, and have largely heeded the call to avoid travel to the U.S. from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
