Susan Webb, president of VoX International, which holds the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority contract to provide destination brand management and marketing services in Canada, boasted during HTA’s spring update that Canada had 37 more visitors to Hawaii in January than Japan, making America’s neighbor to the north the state’s top international market for the month.
But Webb quickly addressed the big elephant in the room — President Donald Trump’s roll-out of tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico — when she told the standing-room-only crowd of visitor industry stakeholders gathered Wednesday at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, “Obviously, you ask, ‘Oh, so how are things in Canada?’ Just tarrific! It’s very challenging times, as you know.”
Trump’s trade policies have whipsawed financial markets and fanned worries over inflation and growth slowdown in the U.S. and in economies across the globe. And some of the administration’s policy reversals and delays have made it difficult for Hawaii’s visitor industry to know where tourism will end up.
Canada, which since the COVID-19 pandemic has sometimes jockeyed with Japan for designation as Hawaii’s top international market, concluded 2024 with a dip in visitor arrivals and spending. The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism reported that 433,049 visitors came from Canada in 2024, an 8.8% drop from 2023 and a 19.8% fall from pre- pandemic 2019.
Visitors from Canada in 2024 spent $1.05 billion, down 14.6% from 2023 and 2.8% from 2019.
In January, 54,333 visitors arrived from Canada, up 0.6% from 2024 but down 22% from 2019.
Economist Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, is concerned that tariff-related trade wars could hurt Hawaii’s bread-and-butter U.S. consumers, who ultimately will pay more for goods and services, causing them to pull back on luxury and long-haul travel.
In 2024, 910,055 visitors came to Hawaii, and as many as 680,192 of them, or nearly 75%, were U.S. travelers. In contrast, Canada accounts for about 5% of Hawaii’s visitors, and China currently accounts for about 0.2%, though neither market has fully recovered from the pandemic.
If the tariffs weaken the world economy, they also could broadly dampen international arrivals to Hawaii, which in many markets still are struggling to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
DBEDT reported that visitors from Japan to Hawaii in January had year-over-year growth of 2.6% to 54,296 arrivals; however, they were still 54.9% below January 2019. Visitors from Japan spent $83.2 million in the first month of 2025, up 5.6% from January 2024 but down 52% from January 2019.
Some 88,878 visitors in January came to Hawaii from all other international markets, including Oceania, “other Asia,” Europe, Latin America, Guam, the Philippines, the Pacific islands and other regions. That was down 1.3% from January 2024 and 21% below January 2019.
Total visitor spending from those markets in January reached $239.1 million, a 8.9% increase from January 2024 and a 6% decline from January 2019.
‘It’s Polynesia, not U.S.A.’
Webb said it’s too soon to know the effects of U.S. tariffs and political discord on travel from Canada to Hawaii. VoX has been the HTA’s brand management and marketing contractor in Canada since 2017, working closely with the tourism agency, the Hawai‘i Visitors and Convention Bureau’s island chapters and other key partners.
“It’s too fresh. It’s too emotional,” she said. “We are in touch with all of our partners in Canada — the airlines, the tour operators the travel agents, the media — to sort of get their consumer sentiment of what’s happening. So is it a short blip or long-term?”
HTA interim President and CEO Daniel Naho‘opi‘i told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that polls show that Canadians are less likely to travel to the U.S. now. He said recent surveys have “suggested a potential 21% reduction in Canadian visits to the U.S., but there is still considerable uncertainty as to the potential impact.”
Webb said it is challenging at this early stage to measure the impacts of Trump administration policies and tariffs, especially since history shows that Canadian visits to the U.S. during Trump’s first term went up by 2 million, even though she recalls that Canadians had said, “We aren’t going to the U.S. That’s it.”
However, Brewbaker opined that the current Trump administration is different from the past. He is concerned that tariffs will hurt international arrivals as well as domestic arrivals since “American tariffs are not paid by foreign partners, they are paid by U.S. consumers.”
“The expectation being formed worldwide — both domestically by Americans being surveyed who are revealing what they think is going on as well as everybody else on the planet — is that things are going to get really bad. Consumers are hunkering down. Consumers are pulling back. Consumer confidence is falling,” Brewbaker said.
“I don’t want to draw broad-based conclusions that everything will be bad, but nothing is going to be good. My expectation is that destination Hawaii is going to get blasted.”
Webb acknowledged that some travel disruptions from Canada already are occurring.
“There has been some cancellations. There has been some indications from journalists that they will not travel to the U.S.,” she said. “We know that there has been a slowdown in some of the advance bookings, but it’s not stopped and we are going to continue to do everything that we can making sure that we are in market at the right time with the right message.”
Webb advised tourism stakeholders at Wednesday’s HTA spring update that the right message is, “Hawaii loves Canadians. Maui is our 11th province. We just have to keep that message. And the other thing is that you are in the Pacific and it’s Polynesia, not U.S.A.”
Perception counts
Naho‘opi‘i told the Star-Advertiser in an email that if U.S. visits from Canada were to decrease, it does not mean Hawaii visits will decrease in the same manner.
“Hawaii enjoys a physical and psychological separation from the U.S. mainland. Canadians tend to perceive it differently: Native Hawaiian history, unique culture and multi-ethnic makeup of the state,” he said. “Additionally, Canadians perceive the political sensibilities of Blue State Hawaii’s residents as being more aligned with their own.”
However, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is expected to leave office this week, has been urging Canadians to buy local. Naho‘opi‘i said it was concerning for Hawaii when Trudeau said, “Now is the time to choose Canada. It might mean changing your summer vacation plans to stay here in Canada and explore the many national and provincial parks, historical sites and tourist destinations our great country has to offer.”
Members of Trudeau’s Liberal Party on Sunday chose former central banker Mark Carney to replace him as party leader and the country’s prime minister. He is expected to be sworn in as prime minister early this week.
Brewbaker said he doesn’t think Hawaii distancing itself from the rest of the U.S. can win back enough international travelers.
“Americans are bad at geography; everybody else is educated,” he said.
Webb said competition for Canadian travelers is heating up from China, Mexico and the Caribbean and emerging destinations like Portugal and Spain, which have spent lots of marketing dollars attracting Canada’s winter travelers, affectionately called “snowbirds.”
Webb said the Canadian dollar is now worth only 69 cents to the U.S. dollar, another deterrent for travelers.
“The exchange rate is actually more important, we think, than any of the political situations,” she said.
Likewise, Naho‘opi‘i said the main challenge to increasing Chinese visitors to Hawaii is the U.S. visa process and lack of direct flights, rather than tariffs.
“Currently, the Chinese market is small for Hawaii with a focus on affluent individuals and family travel. While tariffs have an indirect effect, currency fluctuations have a more significant impact on affordability,” he said. “A 10% tariff increase is unlikely to cause major shifts in exchange rates.”
But Brewbaker said he doesn’t think more favorable currency exchange rates would make much of a difference in the current political climate.
“If the ruble was cheap, would you go to Russia for vacation?” he asked.
