Servers take care of diners during the lunch service at the ever popular Charcut Restaurant in Calgary, April 17.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
Canadians are saving a bundle by cancelling their trips to the U.S., and one of the big beneficiaries of the travel boycott appears to be restaurants here at home.
The number of reservations at Canadian restaurants has grown more than 20 per cent so far in April compared to last year, continuing a months-long trend of Canada leading many other countries in restaurant dining growth.
The large increase in Canadians heading out for a bite comes as travel to the U.S. craters. In the last week of March the number of Canadian residents returning by land from the U.S. declined nearly 28 per cent, while the number of U.S. residents crossing in to Canada also fell by 7.5 per cent, according to a new consumer spending report by Rachel Battaglia and Abbey Xu, economists at Royal Bank of Canada.
“Lower international travel spending isn’t all bad from a Canadian perspective,” they wrote. “Historically Canadians spend more on travel abroad than foreigners spend in Canada. So, more shoppers staying close to home could help boost sales in the domestic hospitality sector.”
Restaurants are emerging as a rare bright spot in an otherwise gloomy consumer economy. The Conference Board of Canada’s consumer confidence index plunged to its lowest level on record in March as more people feared the trade war with the U.S. would hurt their jobs.
That’s led to a pullback in some types of retail spending, according to credit and debit card data tracked by RBC as of March. Since January Canadians have trimmed their spending on essentials, while spending on discretionary goods, excluding automobiles, has been stalled at around the same level it was at in the fall of 2023.
Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.