A chill on tourism in Florida’s ‘Little Quebec’

Hollywood, Florida (CNN) — On a sunny and warm late-February day at Richard’s Motel in Hollywood, Florida, guests mostly from Quebec and Ontario dipped into the swimming pool and gathered for morning coffee and conversation in a courtyard the hotel’s Quebecois owner calls the Parc de l’Amitié, or Friendship Park.

The motel’s aesthetic mixes Florida and the far north. Here a snow man statue and wooden fence covered with Canadian license plates, there a sea turtle statue and a tiki bar.

Only one thing seemed off on this balmy high-season morning — a Vacancy sign illuminated to the right of the motel’s office door.

Come winter, beach towns like this one dotting the Atlantic Coast stretch of Florida surrounding Fort Lauderdale have long brimmed with French Canadian tourists and other snowbirds who arrive for warmth and sunshine.

Alongside Florida’s famous beaches, they enjoy Canadian-owned restaurants serving some of their favorite foods, shows featuring some of Quebec’s biggest homegrown stars who fly in to perform and other glimmers of home that have sprung up in the area.

But this winter wasn’t what Richard’s Motel owner Richard Clavet and other hoteliers in the area had hoped for. Destinations like Greater Fort Lauderdale, long a draw for those seeking a winter warm-up, illustrate how conflicted many once-frequent Florida visitors feel about visiting now — and what a decline in visits means for local businesses.

“Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of issues. And surprisingly, we were expecting the Trump administration to come in — more prosperity, everything will be going great,” said Clavet, a dual Canadian and US citizen who said he voted for Trump in 2024.

February 2025 was one of his busiest months at the seven motels and extended-stay properties he owns in the area that largely target French Canadians, he said.

But when the tariffs on Canadian goods took effect in early March last year, Clavet said, the cancellations started rolling in — including from repeat guests who, come April, often reserve for the following winter before they’ve even started their drives back north to Canada.

“A lot of people started to cancel and they stopped reserving. A lot of them were, I would say, polite, and not necessarily saying their reason for cancelling, saying they got sick or making excuses instead,” Clavet said.

But some of his past guests were more honest about their motivations.

“One of them cancelled and we called him back and said, ‘Sir, you’re leaving $1,000 on the table, the $1000 deposit.’ And he was very firm. He said, ‘I’m not going over there with that dictator of yours,’” said Clavet, who called last spring a “disaster” due to all the cancelled bookings at his properties.

“The impact of Trump’s policies — or the perception of them — was enormous last March and April,” he said.

This winter season, too, saw a storm of cancellations as well as loyal guests from years past failing to re-book, said Clavet, with some opting to vacation in places like the Dominican Republic and Mexico instead.

He put all his efforts into marketing, offering special prices and posting photos on his Richard’s Motel Family of Lodgings Facebook page of guests enjoying the weekly “Soirée Hot-Dog” grill-outs or Bingo night gatherings under the palm trees in the Parc de l’Amitié, while it dumped snow up north.

“I’m working really hard to overcome the effect, but it’s serious,” said Clavet. He did manage to drum up some business and felt “satisfied” by his efforts.

He was hopeful for a late-season bump in bookings, too, after a Quebec YouTuber went viral recently after visiting one of Clavet’s properties with the goal of “rescuing” a Canadian in Florida with the offer of a free flight home (spoiler: nobody wanted to leave).

“With business, you never know. You might get hit by a hurricane or something else, life is full of cycles,” he said.

Big business from snowbirds

Canadians are far and away the largest international tourism market for the Greater Fort Lauderdale area, said Stacy Ritter, president and CEO of Visit Lauderdale, who has lived in the area since 1974.

“I do not remember a winter without seeing tons of Canadian license plates. So it has been important to this destination for at least a half a century. We get about a million Canadians visiting this destination each year,” she said.

Airport arrivals from Canada from 2025 through March of this year at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were down roughly 7%, she said.

Ritter said two destinations, in particular, in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area have been targeting French Canadian visitors for the last half-century.

A stretch of U.S. Highway 1 just south of Fort Lauderdale, home to Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, has become known as “Little Quebec” because of the number of French-speaking Canadian snowbirds the area has drawn to modest hotels here over the course of decades.

And local hoteliers like Clavet are feeling the hit of a financially chillier winter.

To be sure, the Sunshine State’s massive tourism industry is still humming along, according to figures from Visit Florida, with an estimated 143.3 million visitors in 2025 — up .2% from 2024. More than 90% of those were US domestic travelers, making Florida the No. 1 domestic travel destination.

But the 2.9 million Canadians who visited Florida last year represented a nearly 15% drop from 2024. The state says Canadians still made up 2% of the total visitors, in line with past visitation.

Missing: the ‘kinds of customers we love’

Just a couple blocks south of Richard’s Motel along U.S. Highway 1, at the one-story Curtis Inn, owner Jay Gandhi painted a bleak picture of how his historically busiest time of the year went this season.

“We’re suffering right now,” he said, admitting to having lowered his rates into the double digits at one point with hopes of filling rooms.

Guests at the 28-room motel centered around a courtyard pool are mostly French Canadians during the winter months, and they usually book stays of two to six weeks, Gandhi said.

In early March, he had 20 empty rooms and no bookings for any Canadians at all for the month of April.

By late-March, Gandhi estimated this winter’s Canadian business had been down for him by at least 50% compared to last year. And he was already worrying about next year’s snowbird season, with the usual deposits not coming in.

While some of his missing business was filled with people booking pre- and post-cruise stays and other short-term travelers, Gandhi said he misses the Canadians, who tend to come for longer and treat his rooms and suites like their own homes.

“When they’d go out, they’d turn off all the lights and even the water if there was a small leak. They’d say to me, ‘It’s going to cost you money.’ Those are the kinds of customers we love,” he said.

The currency exchange, with the US dollar still strong against Canada’s, also impacted visitors from Canada this year. And Canadians also report woes about the paperwork requirements when driving south across the US border for an extended stay.

But politics are what’s kept Canadians like Alain Gingras away.

For 12 winters, the 62-year-old, whose career allows him to take some time off during the coldest months of the year, drove south from his home in Saint-Hubert, near Montreal, to warm up at mobile home resorts in places like nearby Deerfield Beach and Pompano.

Spending a few weeks or more thawing out in the Florida sun during Quebec’s harshest season was a pleasure he eagerly anticipated, said Gingras, who spent his days golfing, relaxing and dipping in the pool.

Lately, however, Gingras has opted to fly to Mexico instead for his winter warm up. And while he says prices are creeping up south of the US border, he has no plans to return to Florida as long as President Trump is in office.

“I always say half of me is American and the other half is Canadian, and when I go to Florida it’s my second house. I have fun with the Americans, they’re very good people,” he said.

But he found it impossible not to feel affected by Trump’s rhetoric.

“He touched the Canadians, it’s impossible to like him. I don’t give my money,” said Gingras, who’s already rented an apartment with a swimming pool in Playa del Carmen for next winter’s escape.

Some good times roll on

But as Ritter noted, there are still plenty of Canadians traveling to Florida. And while the drop in visitation is significant, “it is not as significant as the US is seeing nationwide,” she said.

The balmy sunshine and ocean views surely help.

Along the roughly 2.5-mile-long Hollywood Beach Broadwalk, the Canadian-owned EZeat Restaurant serves “real Canadian poutine” (cheese curds in gravy over fries) and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches in addition to burgers, club sandwiches and other all-American fare.

Andy Buntic said the pedestrian promenade on the Atlantic Ocean in front of the restaurant he owns with several family members was less busy this winter than in seasons past. Initially, he said, he was worried about how his business might be impacted by “politics and the economy.”

But business at EZeat, which opened in 2024, boomed this winter, Buntic said, thanks to support from domestic tourists from the US and locals as well as Québécois tourists that seek out his place as one of the few Canadian businesses fronting the ocean.

“There’s less people on the boardwalk but there’s more people who consume,” he said.

Many Canadian snowbirds who flew south have been sated in other ways in Florida, too. Despite a few cold fronts that blasted the state this winter, sun and warmth have been in ample supply.

Mimi Gilbert, 80, wanted to spend some time away from her home in Quebec this winter and said she wanted to go somewhere that felt safe and where she knew she could get by with speaking mostly French.

She rented one of Clavet’s accommodations for several weeks “totally blind,” she says, explaining she knew nothing about the location in Florida and had never visited before. She’s enjoyed her time so much she’s already planning to return for longer next winter.

“I feel secure here. People come and look for me if I don’t show up to drink my coffee. I’m isolated where I live in Quebec, but here I’ve found a community. We’re like a big family that lives together for a short time — and the weather is beautiful,” she said.

Gabriel Tessier, also from Quebec, rented a studio suite for several weeks in January and February at Green Seas Motel in Hollywood. When he told friends back home that he was headed to Florida, some asked why he’d want to come this year, he said, considering what they’d all heard on the news.

“I told them, ‘No judgement, I want to find out for myself,’” said Tessier, adding that he’s already convinced a few of them to join him next year.

“They know I confirmed it’s a great place, a good area, the accommodations, the friendship,” said Tessier.

He’s loving his daily life in Florida.

“I even went to a nude beach here, would you believe it? At 71 years old,” he said.

“The time remaining is smaller and smaller, there’s no time to lose. I’m having a ball.”

Canadian visitors ‘critically important’

Nonetheless, the Canadian visitors who didn’t make the journey this year are sorely missed, said Ritter with Visit Lauderdale.

“Canadian travelers stay longer than domestic travelers and spend more money. And when you’re a community where tourism is your number one industry, any dip is significant. Canadian visitors keep our residents employed through the money they spend,” she said, calling them “critically important” from a visitation perspective.

Guy Picher, who’s co-owner of Shell Motel, along U.S. Highway 1 in Hollywood, said his clientele has changed this season, with fewer Canadians and more cruise ship passengers who were in and out.

Demand in the past has been so good that he would normally be calling people in the winter to say, “Sorry we have nothing left, or just one night.”

That’s because typically during February and March, Picher would field 20 to 40 requests per day from potential guests, mostly French-speaking Canadians, asking for prices and availability.

“If I get one a day now, it’s good.”

Terry Ward is a Florida-based travel writer and freelance journalist in Tampa who dreams of spending more time in Quebec.

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