Tourism in the territories: Visits, expenditures, and getting around

We’re on the cusp of winter in Canada—not the time that most travellers think of visiting the far north, but what better time to dive into the data?

Although the majority of international tourists to Canada visit the provinces, a small but steady proportion continue to visit the vast, northern landscapes.

Most international visits, expenditures are in the spring and summer

Based on preliminary data, non-resident visitors to Canada took 180,000 visits to Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut in the second quarter of 2024, up from the same quarter in 2023 (152,000). The high mark for visits in a second quarter belongs to 2019 (232,000). In the second quarter of 2024, $127.7 million was spent and became the new high for any second quarter on record, edging out the second quarter of 2018 ($122.1 million).

Since we started tracking the current data series in 2018, the record high for any quarter was reached in the third quarter of 2018, when non-resident visitors made 355,000 visits to the territories. In the same quarter, those visitors spent $141.4 million on their visits—the highest amount spent in any quarter on record.

Winter visitors stay longer, on average

Non-resident visitors made 52,000 visits to the territories in the fourth quarter of 2023, the highest number for any fourth quarter. The 45,000 visits made in the first quarter of 2024 are just shy of the record set in the same quarter of 2019 (46,000).

Visitors spent an average of 6.3 nights per visit in the first quarter of 2019, the longest average stay for any quarter, followed by the first quarters of 2023 (4.8 nights), 2020 (4.6 nights), and 2018 (4.4 nights).

In contrast, visitors did not stay longer than an average of 2.8 days in any second or third quarter on record.

State of the plate

Most non-resident visitors arrive in the territories by methods other than commercial air—with land crossings seeing an uptick in traffic in the spring and summer months. Statistics Canada’s Frontier Counts include data supplied by the Canada Border Services Agency for major international land border crossings, including the four Yukon-Alaska crossings.

The 45,700 American-plated automobiles (excluding motorcycles) that crossed into Yukon from April to September 2024 was almost five times more than the 9,200 that crossed from October 2023 to March 2024.

Daily counts of American-plated automobiles crossing into Yukon ranged from a low of 51 to a high of 126 in April 2024 (daily average of 79.8); from 80 to 283 in May (daily average of 174.6); from 210 to 393 in June (daily average of 309.2); from 210 to 441 in July (daily average of 341.0); from 200 to 392 in August (daily average of 308.7); and 201 to 386 in September (daily average of 282.1).

Most American vehicles crossing into Yukon had Alaskan licence plates, while those plated in California, Washington, Arizona, Florida, Texas, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado were the likeliest to make up the handful of crossings of other vehicles from April to September 2024.

However, there are some fun outliers among the non-Alaskan vehicles: on August 20, 2024, there were 27 crossings into Yukon by Florida-plated automobiles—the highest daily tally for any US state entering Yukon by automobile from April to September. On July 13, 26 California-plated automobiles crossed into Yukon, while 24 Texas-plated automobiles crossed on July 16.

Getting around in the North

In 2022, there were 5,362 kilometres (km) of publicly owned road assets in Yukon, compared with 3,442 km in the Northwest Territories and 706 km in Nunavut. These include highways as well as other types of roads such as arterial, collector and local roads.

In 2021, 91.8% of the rural population of the Northwest Territories lived within 2 km of the road network, followed by Yukon (88.2%) and Nunavut (82.2%). Access to some roads in the territories can vary by season. By comparison, the nationwide average was 97.7%.

To learn more

Check out our Travel and Tourism Statistics and Rural Canada Statistics portals for the latest data and analysis.