Canadian travel abroad drops to lowest level since 2010

Canadians took only 4.8 million trips to other countries in February, Statistics Canada says, the lowest monthly total we've seen since October 2010.

The data agency reported that the decrease was largely because of a big drop-off in the number of same-day car trips to the United States, which were down 7.1 per cent to two million trips. The volume of Canadians travelling to other countries outside the U.S., meanwhile, was relatively stable at 889,000 trips.

Travelling abroad certainly got a lot less appealing from a financial perspective during the month because of the loonie, which was worth less than 80 cents US in February. In the same month a year earlier, the loonie was worth between 90 and 95 cents US.

At the same time as Canadians were staying home, travel to Canada from foreigners was relatively stable in February from a month earlier at 2.2 million trips.

46,000 visitors came from China during the month, an increase of 10 per cent. On the opposite end of the scale, only 24,000 Australians visited Canada in February, a decrease of 8.2 per cent.

More to come