Destination British Columbia budgeted total expenses of $60.1 million for 2026-27. Destination Ontario’s operating estimate for 2025-26 was $33.7 million. Travel Alberta’s allocation for 2026-27 is reported at $75.2 million. Set those three lines beside each other and the standing complaint that Alberta starves its tourism sector stops working, because on an agency-to-agency basis this province funds the job ahead of both larger provinces.
Key facts
- Travel Alberta reported 38 million visitors to Alberta in 2024 with $14.4 billion in visitor spending, up 12% from $12.8 billion in 2023.
- Travel Alberta reported preliminary visitor spending of $15.2 billion for calendar 2025 on 18 February 2026, built from Destination Canada lodging-aligned spend reporting and Statistics Canada tourism leading indicators rather than from a completed survey.
- The Government of Alberta’s tourism strategy sets a target of $25 billion in annual visitor expenditure by 2035.
- The Alberta tourism levy rises from 4% to 6% effective 1 April 2026, with revenue projected at $200 million in 2026-27 and $214 million by 2028-29.
- Destination British Columbia budgeted total expenses of $60.1 million for 2026-27 and Destination Ontario’s operating estimate for 2025-26 was $33.7 million.
Two headline numbers that do not belong in the same sentence
The pairing that has been circulating all month is 38 million visitors and $15.2 billion in spending. Those are not the same series and they are not the same year.
The 38 million is a 2024 person-visit count drawn from Statistics Canada survey data, and it includes day trips. The spending figure that belongs with it is $14.4 billion. The $15.2 billion is calendar 2025, and it is a preliminary estimate assembled from lodging data and leading indicators while the survey results were still months away.
Divide one by the other and you get a per-visitor spend that is wrong in both directions at once. Somebody will do it anyway. They always do.
The underlying performance is strong enough that it does not need the sloppy version. Alberta’s growth in 2025 ran above 6% against a national figure near 4%. Overseas arrivals were up 3% while the national number fell 2%. American visitors were up 5% while Canada as a whole lost 6% of them. That last line is the one worth keeping, because it means Alberta gained American travellers in a year the rest of the country was losing them.
The levy now collects more than the ministry spends
Here is the line item that matters and almost nobody has read. The tourism levy goes from 4% to 6% on 1 April 2026. Projected revenue is $200 million in 2026-27, rising to $214 million by 2028-29.
Total expense for the Ministry of Tourism and Sport in 2026-27 is reported at $127 million, declining to $112 million by 2028-29.
By our own arithmetic that is roughly $73 million more collected than spent in the first year, and the gap widens every year after it. That is not an accusation. A levy is general revenue and always has been, and nothing in the design promises a visitor that their 6% funds a trail or a highway pullout. But an industry that is about to be asked for $25 billion a year by 2035 is entitled to know whether the instrument named after it is a tourism programme or a revenue line, and the answer is currently visible only to people who read two separate budget documents side by side.
On a hotel room at $220 a night, the levy step from 4% to 6% adds about $4.40 a night, or roughly $13 on a three-night stay. Nobody cancels a trip over $13. The point is not the household impact. The point is what $200 million a year is now expected to do.
The strategy is a spending target with no volume attached
The $25 billion by 2035 target is an expenditure target. It names no visitor count, no average spend, no split between in-province and international, and no capacity figure for the places that would have to absorb the traffic. From $15.2 billion that is a lift of roughly 64%, which is our arithmetic, over nine years.
Those are two very different provinces depending on which lever moves. Higher spend per visitor means more hotel rooms and longer stays in places that already fill in July. More visitors means pressure on the same corridor everyone already knows is full. A place like Vulcan gets there on a curiosity and a gift shop, and the parts of this province that have room to grow are mostly not the parts currently carrying the load.
None of that is a reason to lower the target. It is a reason to publish the arithmetic underneath it, because a target without a volume assumption cannot be planned against by a single operator on the Alberta prairies trying to decide whether to add eight rooms.
Ask Travel Alberta for the visitor-volume assumption behind the $25 billion, and ask the Ministry of Tourism and Sport how much of the $200 million levy is allocated to tourism programmes in 2026-27. Both are fair questions with real answers. Put them in writing before the spring estimates, when the numbers are still being set rather than defended.
