While the ongoing trade war between the United States and Canada has led to many Manitobans eschewing trips down south in favour of local sightseeing, that’s not necessarily the case in the other direction.
Travel Manitoba says U.S. visitors to the province seem undeterred by the tension over tariffs and continue to cross the border in large numbers.
“We have a lot of Americans that come into Canada, and particularly into Manitoba, for world-class fishing, they come to see polar bears in the wild, they come to see beluga whales in the wild,” Travel Manitoba’s Colin Ferguson told 680 CJOB’s The Start.
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“There’s no better place on the planet to view those, and our northern lights are as good as it gets anywhere on the planet.”
Ferguson said Manitoba has yet to see a dip in American travellers, who typically make up about four per cent of visitors to the province and about eight per cent of tourism spending.
Visitors from the U.S. tend to be well-heeled and want to spend their tourism dollars on high-profile ‘bucket list’ experiences, like visiting Churchill in northern Manitoba, known as the polar bear capital of the world.
With the ongoing tensions between the two countries, he said, hopefully more Canadians will choose Manitoba as a destination for in-country travel.
“That’s the strategy going forward — attract more Canadians to Manitoba, encourage more Manitobans to travel within their own province … and continue to attract certainly the near markets in the U.S.”
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