AI is Planning Vermont Vacations and Canadians are Vanishing From the Kingdom: 7 Takeaways From the State's New Visitor Study

The tourism economy is, to a striking degree, the same loyal travelers coming back year after year. That loyalty is an asset, but it’s also a quiet vulnerability.

Vermont’s tourism office recently released a 256-page survey of more than 8,000 visitors. Most of it confirms what residents already assume. These are the findings that matter to the people who live here.

The Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing has released its Annual Visitor Tracking Report, a 256-page study conducted by Downs & St. Germain Research based on 8,208 surveys collected between October 2024 and October 2025 — most of them gathered in person at attractions, ski resorts, breweries, museums, and downtowns across the state.

Much of the report confirms the obvious: visitors love Vermont and plan to return. But folded into the data are findings with real consequences for residents, businesses, and the towns that host them. Here are seven.

1. AI is already planning Vermont trips — and it has nearly caught the state’s own website

For the first time, the survey asked visitors whether they used AI to plan their trip, and 6% said they used ChatGPT or a similar tool. That already nearly matches the share who used the state’s official VermontVacation.com (7%) and beats the state’s tourism e-newsletter (4%). Among fall visitors, AI use climbed to 9%.

The number is small but the direction is the story: in its debut appearance in this dataset, AI is already roughly even with the state’s flagship tourism website as a trip-planning source. For Vermont towns, attractions, and small businesses, the practical question is whether their information shows up — accurately — when a visitor asks a chatbot where to go and what to do. A growing share of travelers are asking a machine, not a brochure, and businesses that aren’t visible to it may not realize they’re already behind.

2. Canada is pulling back — and the Northeast Kingdom is taking the hit

Statewide, Canadians make up 9% of Vermont’s visitors. But that number hides a sharp regional split. In the Northeast Kingdom, 21% of visitors come from Canada — 15% from Quebec alone. In southern Vermont, it’s just 1%.

That matters because Canadian travel to Vermont has fallen off steeply: crossings into the state dropped from roughly 2.4 million in 2024 to about 1.6 million in 2025, according to state transportation data, amid tariff tensions and boycott sentiment. The damage isn’t spread evenly across the state. It is concentrated in the Kingdom — among the most rural and economically fragile corners of Vermont, and the region with the least cushion to absorb it.

3. The state’s tourism marketing is nearly invisible to the visitors it’s aimed at

For all the attention paid to promoting Vermont, the report suggests the state’s marketing barely registers. A full 61% of visitors recalled seeing no Vermont advertising at all in the six months before their trip, and only 20% found any advertising, promotion, or travel story even somewhat influential in their decision to come. Just 5% used Vermont Tourism’s official social media to help plan.

Visitors instead leaned on generic tools — mapping websites (43%) and word-of-mouth advice from friends and family (36%) — while the state’s own channels ranked far down the list: VermontVacation.com at 7%, the printed Inspiration Guide at 6%, the e-newsletter at 4%. Compass Vermont has previously reported that the state’s tourism marketing budget runs well below those of neighboring New England states. This is what that gap looks like from the visitor’s side of the transaction.

4. Vermont’s visitor economy runs on regulars, not newcomers

Nearly half of Vermont’s visitors — 46% — have been to the state more than 10 times. Only 17% were here for the first time. The tourism economy is, to a striking degree, the same loyal travelers coming back year after year.

That loyalty is an asset, but it’s also a quiet vulnerability: a base that is devoted but not obviously expanding, and one the report notes skews older. A state relying on repeat visitors is a state that has to keep its existing fans happy more than it has to win new ones.

5. The typical visitor out-earns the typical Vermonter

The median visitor reported a household income of $118,420. More than half (57%) earn at least $100,000 a year, and 23% earn more than $200,000. The median visitor age was 46. That places the typical Vermont visitor well above the typical Vermont household in income.

It’s a useful corrective to a familiar talking point. State officials like to describe visitors as “temporary taxpayers” who help fund services for residents. The data says they are that — and also, on average, considerably wealthier than the Vermonters waiting on them.

6. When visitors do complain, they complain about the same things residents do

Only 14% of visitors felt anything was missing from their Vermont experience at all. But the short list of what they named is telling: entertainment and activities, public transportation, road conditions and infrastructure, dining options, affordability, and spotty internet and cell service.

It reads almost exactly like a Vermonter’s list of grievances about living here. The handful of things visitors notice are the same things residents live with every day — which suggests the visitor experience and the resident experience aren’t as separable as tourism messaging sometimes implies.

7. Vermont is still a drive-up state, and EVs are barely showing up

Vermont remains overwhelmingly a drive market: 82% of visitors arrived by car, far ahead of those who flew, bussed, or took the train. And despite years of state investment in building out EV charging, only 5% of visitors drove a fully electric vehicle.

For towns weighing whether to install or expand charging infrastructure, that’s a real-world data point on current demand — and a measure of how far the electric transition still has to travel among the people driving into Vermont.

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Also in the report, briefly: Ben & Jerry’s was the single most-visited attraction in the state, drawing about 22% of visitors — ahead of Lake Champlain and Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace. Fall draws the highest share of first-time visitors, but those leaf-peepers are also the least likely of any season to say they’ll return. And winter visitors are the most single-minded of all: they come for one thing, and that thing is skiing.

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