Travel to Canada by foreign residents increased 0.9% in December to two million trips, largestly because of an increase in overnight trips by Americans, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.
Overnight plane travel from the U.S. rose by 2.4% while overnight car trips rose 0.9%. Same day car trips edged up 0.2%.
Travel from residents from overseas countries was up 0.2% to 343,000 trips, with much of the increase coming from visitors from India (24.8%), China (10.3%), Switzerland (8.5%) and Japan (6.8%).
Despite the December increases, travel to Canada was down 9.8% for the year due to a 9.2% decline in travel from Americans and 12.5% drop in travel by overseas visitors.
Visits from Mexico fell the most (-36.5%) in the past year, followed by visits from Japan (-28.4%), South Korea (-26.7%), the U.K. (-16.7%) and Hong Kong (-15.6%).