With Canadian travel to the U.S. still plummeting, some cities south of the border are begging visitors to come back.
Vacation hotspot Palm Springs, Fla., is making sure Canadians know they are welcome.
Banners with the Maple Leaf in a heart have been hung in the city’s downtown strip and in the airport.
“The Maple Leaf belongs in Palm Springs,” Mayor Ron De Harte told Global News.
“This is simply a way to say to the Canadians who are our friends and neighbours, and truly our community, because they are here. Many are here for two, three, four months every year, and they are part of our community.
“And this was a way to say for those that are here still in town and haven’t headed home, thank you, we love you, and rest assured that next year, no matter what’s going on in Washington, D.C., we are gonna continue to be the Palm Springs you fell in love with decades ago.”
De Harte said that Canadians make up a significant component of their travel industry, with roughly 300,000 Canadians coming to Palm Springs every year.
New regulations kicked in on Friday, requiring Canadians spending more than 30 days in the U.S. to register with the U.S. government.
Last week, WestJet and Flair Airlines announced they are cutting their season short from Canada to Palm Springs due to fewer bookings.
“Then we’re hearing locally in town, people are just sharing that they’re concerned, they don’t feel comfortable,” he said.
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“They’re leaving. We hear from people who are in Canada, and that are emailing that are saying that, ‘We’re hearing stories about people being held up at the border and this is not a comfortable time for us’.”
But De Harte said Canadians will always be welcome.
Closer to the B.C.-U.S. border, towns with deep ties on both sides also say they are feeling the effects of what is happening in the White House.
Whatcom County is the second-largest trade gateway along the U.S. border with Canada, after Detroit and Windsor.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars pass through Whatcom County, both ways, so this is very important aspect of Whatcom County,” Satpal Sidhu, Whatcom County executive told Global News.
He said the county also has two oil refineries, which supply jet fuel to Vancouver International Airport and SeaTac International Airport and fuel to communities on both sides of the border.
Whatcom County is also home to four educational institutions and is a destination for outdoor enthusiasts and travellers from all over the world.
“We have more connections with the north, the Canadian side, than with Seattle,” Sidhu said, adding that about one quarter of the county’s population is connected to Canada.
He said they were just getting back to “normalcy” following the COVID years, when U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war began.
“I think the respect is mutual,” he added, speaking of U.S. and Canadian citizens, “and I think that we would like to see this disturbance and hard feelings caused by some federal rhetoric to go away and we should be back to our basic values and our basic relationships that we’ve always had between Canada and the U.S.”
Sidhu said they will always welcome their Canadian neighbours and he knows that Canadians will always welcome Whatcom County residents as well.
The latest numbers from Statistics Canada show that it is not just Canadians changing travel plans.
More than half a million fewer visitors arrived in Canada by air in March, compared to the same time last year, which is a drop of 7.4 per cent.
However, about 300,000 more U.S. visitors arrived in Canada in March, which is up 1.2 per cent.
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