Canadian air bookings into New York for the U.S. Open period are up 14 percent year over year, according to new data from Amadeus Hospitality — a rare piece of good news in a cross-border market that has spent most of the last two years moving the other way.
Amadeus Travel Intelligence pulled the figures on July 22, covering travel from Aug. 21 through Sept. 13. Canadian travelers account for 4.3 percent of international inbound bookings to New York in that window, up from 3.6 percent during the same stretch last year.
Advisors should read that number narrowly. Statistics Canada logged 15 consecutive months of year-over-year declines in Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. through March 2026, and air travel has been the more stubborn of the two modes even as automobile crossings began to stabilize this spring. Canadian travel to the U.S. fell roughly 25 percent in 2025 overall, costing the U.S. tourism economy billions in visitor spending. A tournament-specific spike into a single gateway city over a three-week window is not the same thing as a recovery in Canadian leisure demand, and clients asking about the broader trend deserve the fuller picture.
Domestic Travelers are Carrying the Volume
The more durable story in the Amadeus data is where the rest of the growth is coming from. Domestic air arrivals into New York for the tournament period are up 15 percent, offsetting a 5 percent decline in international arrivals and leaving total bookings essentially flat — within 0.5 percent of 2025.
Three states account for 71 percent of that domestic growth: California, Florida, and Texas. Economy bookings within domestic travel grew 21 percent, which suggests the incremental traveler is more price-sensitive than the traditional U.S. Open attendee and may be shopping harder on air, hotel, and ground.
International Trips are Fewer but Bigger
The international travelers who are still coming are spending longer and traveling for work more often. Business travel bookings within the inbound international mix rose 2 percent, and stays of more than 14 nights climbed 6 percent while short and medium stays both declined.
That pattern gives advisors a longer runway to sell into. A client flying in from abroad for the Open is increasingly building the tournament into a two-week-plus itinerary rather than a long weekend, which opens up pre- and post-stay components in the Hudson Valley, the Hamptons, New England, or a domestic connection to another market entirely.
The Demand Backdrop
The tournament itself continues to grow. The U.S. Open drew 1,144,562 fans across three weeks in 2025, a 9 percent increase over 2024 and the second straight year above one million. This year’s edition returns to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows.
For advisors, the headline is that overall booking volume into New York is flat while its composition has shifted underneath. Growth is coming from economy-fare domestic travelers out of three Sunbelt states and from a smaller pool of international clients staying substantially longer — two very different books of business, and neither one is the Canadian market coming back.
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