Destination Toronto is the city’s official destination marketing organization, promoting Toronto to leisure travelers, business visitors, and event organizers worldwide. It works with industry and government partners to attract visitors, support major events, and strengthen the city’s tourism and hospitality sector.
Having lived and worked in Toronto through such a transformational period, what feels most different about the city today compared to your early memories?
The most dramatic change is the intensification, urbanization and density. When I started this job more than 20 years ago, I used to get off the subway at Union Station and walk across surface parking lots to this office. You can't do that anymore. Those lots have been replaced by 50- and 60-storey condos and office towers, a stadium, bars and restaurants. What was once empty space is now a dense, energetic urban environment.
What's changed most dramatically is not just the skyline but the street-level experience. Toronto is unique in a North American context because its commercial centre is also its entertainment centre and home to hundreds of thousands of residents. That mix of residential, commercial and entertainment uses creates a 24-hour vibrancy. The downtown doesn't empty out when offices close because that's when the theatres, concert halls, stadiums and restaurants come alive, and many people simply walk home to nearby condos.
Tourism is often discussed separately from broader economic growth. Do you think there's still a disconnect between tourism's economic contribution and the way it's perceived?
That gap is closing as people better understand the connection between tourism and success in other sectors. Tourism is an essential export. When someone comes from London and spends money at a restaurant, hotel, taxi, store or theatre, that's money that didn't start the day in our economy but ends the day in our economy and continues to circulate within it. It helps grow the economy just like any other export sector.
Tourism is also deeply connected to trade, investment and talent attraction. We use a phrase in the industry: "It starts with a visit." Someone may come for a baseball game, concert, conference or wedding, but while they're here they experience the academic scene, entrepreneurial ecosystem, talent base and diversity of the city. They leave thinking, "That's a place we could locate a business. That's a place I could see living." Tourism is increasingly being recognized not only as an export sector but as a catalyst for other export sectors. If Canada wants to be a global leader in sectors like life sciences, we need the infrastructure, talent and policy environment, but we also need to be a place where global leaders meet.
Toronto recently recorded its highest-ever visitor numbers. Beyond the headline, what's actually driving that growth?
While it was a record year for visitors last year, I wouldn't call it our best year because it wasn’t the optimal balance. The visitor base was more heavily skewed toward domestic travel than it would normally be. At its best, Toronto has a highly diversified visitor economy, with visitors from Canada, the U.S. and overseas markets, alongside a mix of leisure travel, business travel and major events. That diversification helps balance demand throughout the year.
While domestic travel was strong, I have a hard time calling it our best year when our most important non-domestic market was down. U.S. visitation was down 6%, reflecting the changing nature of the Canada-U.S. relationship. Many international markets are also only now returning to pre-pandemic levels. The UK has just surpassed 2019 volumes, Germany is expected to do the same, while China remains at roughly 50% of 2019 levels.
Why are some international markets, particularly in Asia, still recovering more slowly than others?
The biggest reason is airlift. We don't have many of the air routes we once had from China to Toronto. Flights from Beijing traditionally travelled over Russia, but Canadian airlines can no longer use that route because of the war. This is no longer a COVID hangover; it's a geopolitical one.
We're starting to see routes return, including Air Canada's Toronto-Shanghai service. The challenge isn't demand but rebuilding long-haul air capacity. Similar disruptions are also affecting some Middle Eastern hubs as airlines reroute traffic because of regional instability and operational restrictions.
Looking ahead, which international markets represent the biggest opportunities for Toronto, and why?
The scale of opportunity in the United States is enormous. We have a country of 350 million people right beside us, and Toronto Pearson has more flights to and from the U.S. than any airport in the world. There are 52 flights a day between Toronto and New York, and Toronto-New York was recently the only city pair outside Asia to rank among the world's top ten routes for direct air service. We already welcomed about two million U.S. visitors last year, but there is significant room for growth because Toronto is an international city that is highly accessible for Americans.
The UK is also critically important. There are multiple daily flights between London and Toronto, and the journey is relatively short. Toronto has a strong opportunity to position itself as a North American city-break destination, while also offering easy access to attractions such as Niagara Falls, the wine region and Muskoka. It's a market with extensive air service and strong cultural and economic ties.
What prompted the creation of the Destination Toronto Master Plan?
The Master Plan is about the tourism experience itself and identifying the infrastructure gaps that need to be addressed to elevate it. Tourism is the aggregation of thousands of experiences—restaurants, neighbourhoods, attractions, sports and culture—yet no single organization plans it. We asked a simple question: what would tourism look like if it could be planned strategically for maximum impact?
One of the key conclusions was that Toronto needs more large-scale demand drivers—the kinds of attractions that make someone in London, Berlin, Mexico City, Beijing or New York decide to book a trip. People don't fly seven hours because of a great coffee shop. Those smaller experiences matter, but they don't drive the trip. We need more iconic attractions, infrastructure and programming that create that pull.
If Toronto wants to compete with the world's leading destination cities, where are the biggest gaps that still need to be addressed?
We identified the lack of a large-scale permanent stadium for major concert tours. We recently hosted five Bruno Mars shows in a temporary 55,000-seat venue because we don't have an 80,000- or 100,000-seat stadium. There is no other North American city of Toronto's size without that piece of infrastructure. We also identified the need for a larger convention centre. The Metro Toronto Convention Centre is an A-plus venue, but it's too small for many of the world's largest meetings. If we're going to build a world-leading life sciences sector, we need to host the industry's biggest events, and today there are some we simply can't accommodate. There's a misalignment between our ambition and potential on one hand and our physical infrastructure capacity on the other.
Beyond those larger projects, we lack a major pedestrianized street, and there is work to do around visitor mobility, the public realm, cleanliness, safety and the state of repair in key visitor areas. One example is the connection between downtown and the waterfront. They're only about a ten-minute walk apart, yet visitors often pass through unattractive tunnels and underpasses. These are practical improvements with economic, commercial and cultural benefits, and that's ultimately what the Master Plan is about.
Toronto is Canada's largest city and a gateway for many visitors exploring the country. What do you think surprises people most when they arrive?
Toronto is one of the world's truly global cities and, most importantly, Canada's global city.
It embraces inclusion and diversity to a degree that many cities aspire to, and visitors quickly understand what makes it different. Everyone who comes here feels welcome. At the same time, it's a city operating at a high level of energy, with professional sports, concerts, theatre and an extraordinary culinary scene. As the country's largest urban centre and the heart of its music scene, film industry, sports, commerce, finance and media, Toronto offers the scale, vibrancy and activity that comes with being the downtown of an entire country.
What's also exciting is what's adjacent to Toronto. The Toronto Islands are a ten-minute boat ride away, Niagara Falls and Canada's most mature wine region are just over an hour away, and within a few hours visitors can reach cottage country, Ottawa and Montreal. From an international perspective, Toronto is the most welcoming and inclusive city in North America. What's powerful is that you get that level of welcome without compromising on urbanism, energy or scale. If you're doing business in North America, planning a meeting or looking for a city-break destination, Toronto should be high on your list.
