Say another big thank you to Uncle Sam. The US remains Canada’s largest inbound travel market, and rounded out 2010 with some promising figures, according to the latest Travel Characteristics report, published by the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC)’s Research department. 

In the last quarter of 2010, both American spending (+5%) and arrivals (+4%) climbed, resulting in the average nightly spend rising 4% to $141. This contributed to rosier end-of-year stats, too: an overall 1% rise in American overnighters in Canada and a tidy 3% bump in travel-related spending. 

Here are some more key findings:

• CTC key international markets had a mixed bag of news in Q4 2010: a 3% rise in the number of overnight trips and a 2% jump in tourism-related spending were dampened by the average spend per trip dropping 1% to $638.

• In 2010, Americans dug a little deeper in their wallets in Canada, with the average spend per night reaching $133 (+3%) and the average spend per trip up to $533 (+2%).

• American business travellers know their way round Canada. Total spending by this section of the market totalled $1.4 billion (+3%), with the average spend per business traveller trip a generous $815 (+3%).

• Last year was a bumper year for British Columbia. Helped along by the 2010 Winter Games, the province gave a friendly welcome to three million American visitors, up 7% on ’09. These positive numbers were backed by a climbs in the average spend per night (+6%) and spend per trip (+5%).

• The Northwest Territories saw the most bang for an American buck in 2010, boasting an average spend per trip of $2,723.

• Australia was the best performer of CTC’s Core Markets (Australia, France, Germany and the UK) in 2010, with the ledger showing gains in spending (+9%), arrivals (+8%) and, at $1,687, the highest average spend per trip (+2%)

• The UK represents Canada’s largest overseas travel market, but suffered a torrid time last year. Arrivals dropped 4% to 659,400, overnight spending shrank to $808.9 million (-10%) and average nightly spend dropped 4% to $92.

• The Brazil market showed the way forward for CTC’s Emerging/Transition markets (Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico and South Korea), posting seriously strong growth in spending (+32%) and overnighters (+26%), leading to an average spend per trip of $1,719. 

Travel Characteristics is a quarterly report from CTC’s Research department that specifically targets revenue from CTC’s key international markets. It examines what visitors spend per trip, per night and what they’re spending on, breaking the figures down into accommodation, food, trip purpose and activities. Travel Characteristics mainly uses data from Statistics Canada’s International Travel Survey.

Read the Travel Characteristics Q4 2010 report in full.