Canadian tourists return to Collier as visits jump 28%

Despite lingering economic and geopolitical tensions, Canadian visitors are starting to come back to Collier County.

The latest tourism data, for August, shows an 18% increase over 2025 in international visitation overall and a 27.9% increase year over year in Canadian visitors, according to a report by research firm Downs & St. Germain Research at the October meeting of the Collier County Tourist Development Council.

James Brendle, project director and economic research lead at Downs & St. Germain, said Collier County saw 16,400 international visitors in August compared with 13,900 in August 2025, and 5,500 Canadian visitors compared with 4,300 the previous year.

He said visitors from Europe increased from 7,300 in August 2025 to 8,200 this August, an increase of 12.3%.

International visitation had been declining since fiscal year 2024, when the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau reported approximately 317,000 international visitors. Brendle said numbers started going up again in June of this year but noted it will take a while to reach 2024 levels.

“We’re still not quite back to the levels that we were when we started to see those initial decreases, but we are moving in the right direction, which is nice to see,” Brendle told the tourist council.

In response to a question from county commissioner and TDC Chair Burt Saunders, Brendle said estimates from the National Travel and Tourism Office and the U.S. Travel Association indicate that international travel will hit 2024 levels sometime next year.

“That’s the general expectation for international travel at the national level,” he said. “So, Collier is currently on track with that national trend, if not a little bit, maybe ahead of it, given that Collier County has a higher share of international visitors than most places do.

“You guys usually react a little bit quicker to the trends: when international travel fell off, it fell off a little quicker, and when international travel gains, it tends to gain a little quicker.”

Domestic visitors were up 5.4%, from 213,400 to 224,900 year over year, with in-state visitation seeing the largest increase, with 6,100 more Floridians coming to the area.

Brendle reported that overall visitation was up 6.2% year over year in August, from 227,300 to 241,300, but noted that room nights and overall occupancy were down slightly, by 1.7% and 0.7%, respectively.

“This is a trend that we’re seeing across a lot of destinations in the last quarter or even the last six months or so, is a slight decrease in paid visitors and a slight increase in what we call VFRs — visiting friends and relatives,” Brendle said.

He said this trend is usually seen “whenever people are kind of tightening their budget a bit” and cutting back on vacation spending.

“Obviously, given the type of destination that Collier County is, it’s a little bit better insulated from that sort of activity than some other areas, so it hasn’t been a massive shift, but we have noticed that,” Brendle added.

The overall average daily room rate was up 12% to $261.89, while the overall revenue per available room was $119.16, an 11.3% increase since August 2025.

Direct spending by visitors was up 7.8% year over year to $169 million.

Brendle’s report was delivered the same day that tourism and hospitality industry professionals — including representatives from Collier County — gathered in Bonita Springs for a workshop hosted by Visit Florida, focused on shaping the destination marketing organization’s statewide strategic plan for the next five years.