Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Over the last several weeks, talks of impactful tariffs and other ambitions of the Donald Trump administration in Washington has created some anti-U.S. sentiment amongst Canadians. This has been prevalent on the national stage, as Canadian fans were heard booing the U.S. National Anthem during the 4 Nations Face-Off taking place in Montreal.
How much could this anti-U.S. sentiment hurt tourism and other business in Buffalo and Western New York?
Patrick Kaler, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara expresses his concern, especially with how close the region was to seeing traffic and tourism numbers in the region returning to pre-pandemic statistics.
"We had been running a digital campaign in Canada, because it's really kind of our primary market for travel into Buffalo and Erie County. We started in mid-January, it was going well, and then when the tariff issue came out, we received so many negative comments on that digital ad campaign that we had to take it down," said Kaler in an interview with WBEN. "Some of the sentiment was positive, they would say, 'We love Buffalo, but we're not coming right now.' Or, 'We're not going to be coming over the next four years,' and then there was some that I could never repeat. So that was very important for us to take that down, because we just couldn't have that negative sentiment out there."
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While Kaler admits Visit Buffalo Niagara is in a wait and see pattern with how quickly this anti-American sentiment could impact Western New York, he feels the initial sentiment is very high.
"They have as much country pride as we do in the United States, so I don't want to diminish their feelings whatsoever. But I imagine that at some point, they may diminish, where they might come back over the border, but you just don't know until we see what actually comes out of Washington," Kaler said.
Kaler adds that Buffalo and Western New York is already seeing some instances of Canadians canceling their trips or upcoming plans to spend some time in the region due to the ongoing head-butting between both countries.
"Anecdotally, I have heard that some attractions and some hotels have had some cancelations of hotel reservations, or people aren't coming across and to their attractions, because they're able to track the zip codes. We won't actually see the February numbers of cross-border [traffic] until the early part of March. That will also be very telling for us, too," Kaler noted. "And then just what we're hearing about activities at the Canada-U.S. hockey game last week, where there was a lot of booing taking place. It's just going to be a while for us to monitor this and see where things kind of play out."
While the folks at Visit Buffalo Niagara await decisions in Washington, D.C. that could further impact the relationship between Americans and Canadians, Kaler says some of the focus may now shift to some other areas of the U.S. to market Western New York to.
"Because we hadn't even gotten back to pre-pandemic levels of travel across the border, what we've been doing and what we will be doing with our new marketing funds is going after some of our growth potential markets, such as Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago. That's going to be a little bit more expensive to go into those areas, they're going to have to fly in rather than just drive across the border, but we have been seen some great numbers coming out of those markets since the pandemic," Kaler explained. "We do see that as an opportunity. So we'll just shift some of those dollars that we were going to be spending in Canada over to some of those campaigns."