It’s been a tough summer for tourism-based businesses in Canada this summer with visitor numbers down across the board.

Many lay blame to a strong Canadian dollar (especially compared with the USA), high oil prices and a sputtering global economy. Officials from Canada’s three largest cities – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver suggest they are all down on foreign visitors this year.

John Dunn from Tourisme Montreal spoke with the Toronto Globe and Mail today:

“We’re suffering the perfect storm right now,” said Mr. Dunn. “We’ve got high gas prices, high dollar, American passport regulations and a slowing economy. So there’s nothing worse for the tourism economy than all those things put together.” Although visits from Europe and South America are on the rise, those tourists have been unable to fill the void left by the Americans choosing to stay home because of a sluggish economy and high gas prices, he added.

Vancouver is hurting as well:

Vancouver, which usually attracts around 8.7 million tourists a year and $3.7-billion in visitor spending, has seen six per cent fewer Americans this year compared to last.

Stretched over the course of the year, that number is significant, said Walt Judas of Tourism Vancouver.

“We’re talking between 150,000 to 200,000 overnight visitors from the U.S., which is a substantial number,” he said.

In looking at statistics from Stats Canada it appears that visitors for the month of May 2008 are down nearly 10%. It will be interesting to see if things can rebound slightly in the normally travel heavy month of August, stay tuned.