Canadian snowbirds are still unhappy with Trump. And Palm Springs is feeling the chill

It is the peak of the so-called high season in Palm Springs, that busy time of year when the glorious winter sunshine beckons Canadian snowbirds who flock to enjoy desert condos, golf courses and poolside martinis.

Most years.

Palm Springs has felt a chill this winter from Canadian tourists, who are largely boycotting travel to the United States because of their disdain for President Trump and his aggression toward their country.

“Our friends at home said, ‘No, don’t go!’ ” said Lois Chapman, a longtime annual visitor from Ontario who came to Palm Springs this month for a shortened stay with her husband after initially planning to cancel their trip altogether.

Chapman said that her flight from Toronto in early February was mostly empty and that there was a palpable decline in Canadian tourists in the desert town.

“Canada, I think, is just feeling hurt. It’s the climate these days,” said Chapman, a septuagenarian who was volunteering for Modernism Week, a Palm Springs festival celebrating midcentury architecture and interior design.

Canadians — who pump millions of dollars into the economies of Palm Springs and other Coachella Valley cities — often book long stays up to a year in advance, providing a measure of stability for hoteliers and Airbnb owners, said Kenny Cassady, director of business development for Acme House Co., which manages vacation rental properties in the region.

This winter, tourist-oriented businesses are having to adjust to more uncertainty, he said.

With more Canadians staying home, those reliable long stays have been replaced by shorter reservations, booked at the last minute, primarily by domestic travelers, said Cassady, who also is a board member for Visit Greater Palm Springs, a tourism marketing agency for the Coachella Valley.

“We’re all in that nail-biting, last-minute phase of, ‘Are we going to get these rooms booked or not?’ ” he said. “So far, we’re sliding across the finish line with an, ‘OK, that wasn’t horrible.’ But it’s definitely more stressful.”

Cassady, a licensed real estate agent, did three transactions in 2025. All were Canadians selling their Palm Springs condos.

“There’s nobody that’s happy or thrilled about what we’re dealing with right now,” he added. “We’re doing our best to say, ‘We’re here, we love our Canadians, and please come back and see us.’ ”

Statewide, the number of Canadian visitors fell just over 18% in 2025 compared with the year prior, according to Visit California, a nonprofit focused on tourism in the state.

In 2024, some 1.7 million Canadians visited California, spending an estimated $3.7 billion, according to Visit California.

Last year, the number of Canadian visitors slipped to 1.4 million, according to the nonprofit.

The decline came in spite of a marketing campaign by Gov. Gavin Newsom and Visit California aimed at Canadians, with the governor emphasizing that the Golden State is more than 2,000 miles away from the White House.

“Sure, You-Know-Who is trying to stir things up back in D.C., but don’t let that ruin your beach plans,” Newsom said. (You-Know-Who, of course, being Trump.)

Palm Springs Councilmember Ron DeHarte, pictured in 2025, was mayor when the city hung banners downtown proclaiming, “Palm Springs [Heart] Canada.” Snowbirds are important to the local economy.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Trump has upended the typically friendly relationship between the U.S. and its northern neighbor. He has mocked Canada by calling it America’s “51st state,” repeatedly referred to Prime Minister Mark Carney as “Governor Carney” and threatened to annex the country, whose population of 40 million is about the same as California’s.

Trump invoked emergency powers last year to justify stiff new tariffs on Canadian imports, arguing in an executive order that the trafficking of illegal drugs — namely, fentanyl — across the northern border constituted a dire threat to American security.

Last week, the U.S. House voted to rescind Trump’s tariffs on Canada, with the support of six Republicans — including Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin). It was a rare rebuke of the president from the GOP-led chamber, albeit a largely symbolic one since Trump probably would veto the measure if it reached his desk.

“Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!” Trump posted on social media the day of the vote.

Trump also posted that he planned to block the opening of a new bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, because he believed Canada had been exploiting the United States.

In Canada, elected officials and business owners have urged residents to “buy Canadian.” And the famously polite northerners have taken their vacation dollars elsewhere.

Palm trees, warm weather and the San Jacinto Mountains make Palm Springs a popular tourist draw for Canadian snowbirds.

“I just don’t see this ending any time soon,” said McKenzie McMillan, a travel advisor for the Vancouver-based Travel Group, noting that demand for leisure trips to the U.S. is “very low.”

Not only are Canadians angry about the president’s tariffs and comments about their country, he said, but they also are worried about their safety as international visitors and about extra scrutiny at the border because of Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration.

“I’ve seen a lot of times in my life where Canadians protest or speak with their wallets, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an issue where Canadians have had such a resolve,” he added. “People have completely changed their consumer habits.”

McMillan said he has noticed “a bit of a softening” in attitudes toward blue California in recent weeks because of the “pretty effective marketing” by Newsom and the state tourism board, as well as toward Hawaii, which is viewed as somewhat disconnected from mainland U.S. politics.

The few trips that McMillan has booked to the States are mostly last-minute jaunts with inexpensive airfare “because no one is on the planes.”

Many of his clients are opting instead to travel to the Caribbean and to Mexico, which is “absolutely out of control for us this year,” with resorts packed with Canadians, he said.

McMillan said he personally enjoys Palm Springs, Los Angeles and San Diego but that he has not been to the States since two days after Trump won the 2024 election.

“I do love the people and the destinations, but it just doesn’t feel like the right time right now,” he said.

In an email to The Times, Jake Ingrassia, a spokesperson for Palm Springs International Airport, said Canadian demand is softer than at its pre-pandemic peak but has “stayed relatively level over the past couple of years.”

Airline schedules this spring, he said, indicate “a modest frequency adjustment, not a major pullback,” with Canadian-originating service, on average, “down by less than one arriving flight per day in March, April, and May” — some of the busiest months.

The airport, he added, saw a record 3.3 million passengers in 2025 — growth that was primarily driven by domestic travel.

Still, so-called snowbirds are vital to the region’s economy. A 2021 study done for Visit Greater Palm Springs found that Canadians owned 7% of second homes in the Coachella Valley, far more than citizens of any other country except the U.S. Another study, in 2017, found that roughly 303,600 Canadians visited the Coachella Valley that year, spending more than $236 million.

Midcentury Modern architecture in Palm Springs is a big draw during Modernism Week.

Lisa Vossler Smith, the chief executive of Modernism Week — a 10-day festival that began last week and is expected to draw more than 100,000 attendees — said that organizers have been worried about decreased international tourism, especially from Canada.

But so far, domestic ticket sales — especially from colder cities like Chicago, New York and Minneapolis — have made up for the slump, she said.

Vossler Smith said that during a kickoff event for the nearly 500 volunteers who help with Modernism Week, she asked for a show of hands from “our Canadian friends.”

“I swear, it was a third of the room that their hand went up,” she said. “The entire room exploded in applause because we were so delighted they came back.”

In conversations afterward, she said, several told her that the decision to come had been difficult but that they considered themselves part-time Palm Springs residents and wanted to give back.

Chapman said her eyes welled when she saw the hands of fellow Canadian volunteers go up.

“I was surprised and very pleased,” said Chapman, who lives in the city of Niagra-on-the-Lake near the famed waterfalls. “It made everyone teary-eyed. We’d like things to be better.”

For the last 15 years, she and her husband have visited Palm Springs for two to three months, booking their stay as much as a year in advance. They had planned to cancel this year’s trip because of the tensions between the two countries.

But then came a message from a Modernism Week organizer, hoping Chapman would return for her 10th year of volunteering. He assured her that Palm Springs is “in a blue bubble.”

Chapman said her husband would agree to come only if they shortened their trip. In October — months later than normal — they reserved a tiny studio for a 29-day trip that will extend into early March.

In January, when they typically would have been in balmy Palm Springs, the weather back home was dreadful, she said.

“We were snowed in and iced in for three days at our house,” she said.

During Modernism Week events, Chapman said, she is telling more people than ever that she’s Canadian.

“They are all like, ‘Oh, thank you for coming,’” she said. “People are so gracious to us and welcoming us and thanking us for coming — and then apologizing.”