Detroit’s tourism bureau stops advertising in Canada as Canadian visits fall 30%, and moves the money to Europe

DETROIT — Detroit’s tourism bureau has stopped marketing to Canadians altogether, its chief executive said, after a two-year slide in visitors from across the river that he ties to the trade fight between Washington and Ottawa.

Visit Detroit historically spent a seven-figure sum each year, about 10% of its budget, trying to bring Canadians across the border, CBC News reported Thursday. That money is now being spent to draw visitors from Europe instead, President and CEO Claude Molinari told the network.

The numbers. Canadian visits to the bureau’s territory are down 30% over the last two years, the bureau told CBC, though it has seen a 7% bump in the last two months. Molinari gave the same 30% figure to WXYZ-TV in September, when he said the region was “feeling it” and that the bureau had already started shifting its Canadian marketing dollars to U.S. and European travelers, helped by direct flights from European cities into Detroit.

Why stop now. Molinari said running ads in Canada while tensions are high would come across badly. “I don’t want to be tone deaf and just assume, ‘Ok all is forgiven; we’re coming all back,’” he told CBC. He said the bureau will resume Canadian marketing when the tariff dispute is resolved and the two governments have a more positive relationship. Until then, he said, “I can understand why Canadians are upset with us, and I don’t hold that against Canadians.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has placed tariffs on a range of Canadian goods, and Canada has answered with tariffs of its own, CBC noted. The dispute has hit Windsor’s auto industry especially hard.

The other side of the river. In Windsor, the traffic has partly flipped. Gordon Orr, CEO of Tourism Windsor Essex, told WXYZ in September that Americans are still coming over, drawn in part by a U.S. dollar that goes 35 to 40 cents further, while many Canadians have stopped traveling to Michigan and Ohio. A Windsor bar manager told the station he would love to see a concert or a football game in Detroit but has “no desire whatsoever” to cross right now.

What it means here. Detroit sits a bridge or tunnel ride from Windsor, and Canadians were a big enough market that the bureau spent about a tenth of its budget on them. A marketing pause doesn’t close the door, and Molinari stressed that Canadians are welcome now. But it means the bureau is betting, at least for now, that its ad dollars will bring more business from overseas travelers than from neighbors who are choosing to stay home. The 7% uptick in the last two months is the first sign of a turn, if it lasts.

“We miss our Canadian friends for sure,” Molinari said.

For more from the city, see our Detroit page.

Sources:
CBC News, “Detroit tourism bureau halts advertising in Canada amid trade war, hopes Canadians won’t ‘hold a grudge,’” Oct. 22, 2026 (ad pause, budget share, 30% drop and 7% bump, Molinari quotes), https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/detroit-stops-advertising-canada-9.7389950
WXYZ-TV, “Visit Detroit notes 30% decline in Canadian tourism amid tariff disputes,” September 2026 (shift to U.S. and Europe, Orr and Windsor quotes), https://www.wxyz.com/news/visit-detroit-notes-30-decline-in-canadian-tourism-amid-tariff-disputes
Photo: Andrew Heneen, “Detroit skyline from Windsor riverfront.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detroit_skyline_from_Windsor_riverfront.jpg

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Tags: Detroit · Tourism · Canada · Tariffs · Visit Detroit · Jobs and Economy