Industry Leaders Encourage Passage of USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act

The Beyond Borders Tourism Coalition (BBTC) and its members are urging both U.S. and Canadian officials to take action and pass the USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act to rebuild a safe, smart, and welcoming border.

As spring break approaches, BBTC notes that new data confirms 2025 was the worst year for Canada–U.S. cross‑border travel since 9/11. The data also found that Canadian automobile trips to the U.S. fell 30.9% in 2025 (about 7.6 million fewer vehicle trips), while Canadian‑resident return trips from the U.S. were down 30.2% in December alone and a further 24.3% this January. American tourism to Canada has also fallen in recent months, with U.S.-resident trips in December 2025 down 7.5% year-over-year to about 1.6 million visits, including a 7.5% drop in car arrivals, most of them same-day trips. This decline in U.S. visitors contributed to an overall 10.9% decrease in international arrivals to Canada in 2025 compared with 2024. 

These impacts are vast, but the Coalition notes that student and youth travel is seldom part of the conversation.

Instead of hockey tournaments, school exchanges, campus visits, and road trips, BBTC says a historic collapse in cross‑border travel is reshaping youth and student mobility in ways that should alarm every government on both sides. The Coalition says that passing the USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act and using it to rebuild a safe, smart, and welcoming border is the most important step to keep the door open.

The bipartisan USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act would direct the U.S. Trade Representative to establish a dedicated Travel and Tourism Trade Working Group as part of the 2026 USMCA joint review, with a mandate to identify and remove trade‑related barriers to travel, improve border fluidity, coordinate crisis responses, and ensure that policies on security, data, and infrastructure are weighed against their impacts on jobs, youth mobility, and cultural exchange.

The data demonstrating the decline of cross-border visitors represent cancelled school band tours, scrapped sports tournaments, postponed graduation trips, and families deciding that taking their kids south simply no longer feels worth the stress, cost, or risk. Transborder air passengers between Canada and the U.S. now make up a smaller share of screened airport travelers, and airlines have responded by cutting 450,000 seats on Canada–U.S. routes in the first quarter of 2026 alone. This is a 10% reduction, with some carriers slashing U.S. capacity by nearly 60%.  When flight options disappear or prices spike, it is youth and students travelling on tight budgets, often in groups, who are first priced out of cross‑border experiences that once felt routine.

“Student and youth travel is where lifelong curiosity, confidence, and cross-border friendships begin, and those opportunities are vanishing just when young people need them most,” said Carylann Assante, CEO of the Student & Youth Travel Association and co-chair of the Beyond Borders Tourism Coalition. “If we allow today’s border frictions and policy uncertainty to make international trips feel out of reach for schools and families, we will pay the price in lost learning, diminished trust, and a generation that sees borders as barriers instead of bridges.”

At the same time, the rhythm of border travel is being reshaped by new layers of real or perceived scrutiny. Proposals to expand data collection under the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), including years of personal contact history, detailed family information, and mandatory social‑media identifiers, have already had a documented “chilling effect” on lawful, low‑risk travelers from trusted countries. Surveys show that more than a third of potential visitors would be less likely to travel to the U.S. if these intrusive requirements move ahead, with a projected 23% drop from Visa Waiver Program countries alone.

For young people who live online, the idea that their social‑media presence could be scrutinized by an opaque algorithm is particularly corrosive to confidence. Students and youth group organizers are understandably wary of asking participants to surrender years of digital life and family details for a weekend tournament or a spring‑break campus tour. Even when policies do not apply directly to Canadians, the drip‑feed of headlines about added surveillance, surprise fees, and new enforcement actions at the U.S. border creates a shared sense that crossing has become unpredictable, and that uncertainty alone is enough to deter risk‑averse parents, teachers, and school boards.

In addition, Indigenous Services Canada has issued formal guidance strongly recommending that First Nations travelers carry passports in addition to their secure status cards, acknowledging that Jay Treaty rights to free movement are not being reliably honored at the U.S. border. This follows travel advisories from First Nations and tribal organizations warning of detentions and status‑card confiscations by U.S. authorities. For Indigenous youth, that erosion of trust is devastating: it means cultural exchanges canceled, ceremonies missed, language camps disrupted, and cross‑border sports and arts programming quietly dropped because organizers cannot guarantee a safe, respectful crossing experience. 

“Indigenous tourism was built on open, respectful cross-border relationships, and right now those bridges are being quietly pulled up for our young people,” said Keith Henry, CEO of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, and Beyond Borders Tourism Coalition co-chair. “When Indigenous youth are forced to cancel cultural exchanges, sports tournaments, and visits with family across the line because they cannot count on a safe, predictable border experience, we are not just losing business, we are undermining living cultures and the next generation of leaders.”

The damage is landing hardest in the border communities that have long welcomed youth and student travelers. A U.S. congressional report notes that passenger vehicle crossings fell nearly 20% in the first 10 months of 2025, with states like Vermont and Montana seeing declines close to 30%. These numbers translate into empty hotel blocks, shuttered diner booths, and student‑rate tickets going unsold, with operators in places like Old Orchard Beach, Maine, and Kalispell, Montana, reporting effects even worse than during COVID. Those lost trips are not being rescheduled; they are being rerouted, as Canadians increase trips to overseas destinations and within Canada itself, signaling a structural reorientation rather than a short‑term protest.

The BBTC is united in their message to policymakers: The current trajectory is unsustainable, and the spring‑break season now upon us will either mark the start of recovery or cement a generational retreat from cross‑border travel.

The Coalition is calling on:

• Members of the U.S. Congress to advance the USMCA Travel and Tourism Resiliency Act quickly through the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees so that tourism has a formal voice in the July 2026 USMCA joint review.
• The Canadian government to treat the collapse in Canada–U.S. youth and student travel as a strategic threat, not a mere redistribution of tourism, and to engage fully in a trilateral tourism working group once established.
• Both governments to pause or recalibrate new data‑collection and border‑processing measures that add friction without demonstrable security benefit, and to work with industry and Indigenous partners on rights‑respecting solutions.

To learn more about the Beyond Borders Tourism Coalition and its members or to join the call for a saner, more sustainable approach to cross‑border tourism, visit beyondborderstourismcoalition.com.

Courtesy of Groups Today.