Arrivals · who comes to Vancouver
Vancouver’s visitor economy runs on two gateways with counter-cyclical moods: YVR’s record 26.9 million passengers (+2.7%, Asia-Pacific +15.6%, transborder −7.1%) and Canada Place’s 1.2 million cruise guests across 301 ship calls. Preliminary Destination Vancouver data count more than 10.3 million overnight visitors in the first ten months of 2025, up 0.6% on a record 2024.
The air gateway printed an all-time record in 2025 — 26.914 million passengers, 102% of 2019 — but its composition is the real story: domestic +3.8%, Asia-Pacific +15.6%, transborder −7.1%. Vancouver is attracting the long-haul visitor while losing the short-haul American, a pattern national data corroborates (Canada’s international visitor spending dipped 0.7% in 2025 on a first-half US downturn, even as Q4 spending rose 3.6%).
The cruise gateway confirms the visitor mix: 301 calls and 1.2 million passengers in 2025, each call worth an average $3 million locally (cruise lines alone spent $660 million in the region), with more than 80% of ship calls plugging into shore power. The 2026 schedule is the largest yet — about 358 calls and 1.4 million passengers (+19%/+18%), with Disney doubling its roundtrip program. Canada Place took North America’s Leading Cruise Port at the 2025 World Travel Awards, and facial biometrics have cut US border-control processing by up to 94%.
A candid note on the headline: no single audited annual total for Vancouver’s visitors exists yet — Destination Vancouver’s 10.3 million overnights covers January–October 2025 and is preliminary, and the 2024 record base it compares against was itself a recovery high. The honest way to read the year is through its components: a record airport, a near-record cruise season, and an overnight count that kept pace with a record prior year.
The TIO framing: watch the lane mix, not the total. Vancouver’s arrival story is a substitution — Asia-Pacific and cruise demand filling the American gap. The city’s FIFA World Cup summer (June 2026, with 1.36 million transit boardings in a single day) will distort the annual print; the cleaner test is whether the transborder line recovers in 2026 while Asia holds its gains.
The TIO Read: Vancouver’s arrivals are a portfolio rotation, not a growth story. The record airport total hides a swap — the American visitor is being replaced by the Asian long-haul and the Alaska-bound cruiser, and the city comes out ahead on yield if not on volume. 10.3 million overnights in ten months is respectable; what matters is the mix beneath it. Watch 2026 for two numbers: the transborder recovery and the cruise season (358 scheduled calls). If both print, Vancouver will post its first clean, undisputed visitor record — and the hotel shortage study starts the day after.
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