Arrivals · Who’s coming
Toronto welcomed a record 28.2 million visitors in 2025 who spent a record $9.1 billion — with international spending up 11% to $1.8 billion, U.S. arrivals down 6% on tariff turbulence, and a convention calendar of 74 major events worth $982 million doing the heavy lifting.
Destination Toronto’s year-end release (January 2026) draws the profile: 28.2 million visitors — 9.1 million overnight (1.9 million U.S., 1.4 million overseas, 5.8 million domestic) plus 19.1 million day-trippers — spending a record $9.1 billion, with international spending up 11% to $1.8 billion and domestic spending up 5% to $5.7 billion. The U.K. and Germany surpassed their 2019 spending levels for the first time (+9% and +3%); China, Japan and South Korea remain well below 2019 (-47%, -28%, -34%) despite strong 2025 growth rates (+20%, +18%, +20%).
The U.S. line is the policy story: arrivals ended 2025 6% below 2024 at 1.9 million, with spending down 4% — tariff-era turbulence pushing Canadian destinations to lean harder into overseas and domestic demand. Mexico (+13%), India and the recovering Asian markets picked up the slack.
The events layer is structural: 74 major meetings and conventions — a jump of 11 events year-on-year — brought 378,000 delegates and $982 million in economic impact (+54%), the group-segment engine that carried Q4 hotel occupancy.
The TIO read: Toronto’s arrivals tell is the convention delegate, not the leisure tourist. A delegate spends on hotels, restaurants and transit inside a five-kilometre radius on a predictable calendar — the demand pattern hotels can bank. The leisure mix adds the summer peaks; the corporate mix pays the winter bills.
The forward marker for 2026 is FIFA: six World Cup matches at BMO Field put Toronto on the global event map for a month, with Pearson and UP Express already stress-tested through Q2. The overnight-visitor line to watch through 2026 is the U.S. recovery rate — if it turns positive, the record 28.2 million becomes the floor, not the ceiling.
Toronto’s arrivals ledger is the most instructive in the series: a record year built while its largest foreign market shrank 6% — proof that domestic and overseas diversification works. The number that decides 2026 is the U.S. arrival line. Track it quarterly; when it turns, Toronto’s hotel market — already tight at 74% occupancy — has no slack left, and the rate card reprices within a season.
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