Canada’s Travel Industry Gets Biggest Deficit in a Decade

The year 2003 closed for Canada’s tourist sector with a $3.2 billion shortfall, chiefly stemming from less foreign arrivals to the country and more Canadians traveling overseas, Canada Statistics revealed.

The negative balance is by far the biggest deficit the local leisure industry has ever had over the last ten years. Experts are pointing fingers at the SARS outbreak in Asia, the war in Iraq and a larger number of traveling Canadians moving out of the country’s borders.

Canada snared roughly $11 billion in tourism revenues this past year, against more than $14 billions –a new record high- that Canadians spent on travels overseas.

Back in the 1990s, the deficit in the international travel balance was one of the key elements inside the current account shortfall, a situation that triggered the local currency and the U.S. dollar to be on an even keel.

The opposite effect started kicking in by 2003 as the Canadian dollar began to lose ground to the greenback. Amid all this, the U.S. continues to be the number one travel destination for its northern neighbors.

However, the number of Canadian trippers going down to the Caribbean, where destinations offer cheaper packages, is increasing at white heat.