Note that this is number of visits, not number of nights. The number of nights is fairly remarkable. Canadians spend a lot of time in the United States!
What musiclistsareus said. From Eastern Canada, there are a lot of short, organized tours going to major Eastern US cities and Philadelphia is one of the most common. Although I'd have expected Massachusetts to be there, because a lot of people go to Boston. Also, this is much, much cheaper than going to Hawaii :-D ;))
Pittsburgh on one end, Philly on the other end. Alabama in between. Pennsyltucky. All said in the nicest way, I've got nothing against either the cities or the rural areas, in PA or wherever.
I grew up in the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, on the shores of the eponymous lake. 2.5 hours from the U.S. - Canada border, about 4 hours from Toronto. Canadians would often come down to shop at our mall because the sales taxes in Pennsylvania were cheaper than in both Canada and New York state. You could always tell by all the discarded shoeboxes and packaging in the parking lot - they would hide the stuff when they crossed back over the border so they didn't have to pay import tax, and it's easier to do that when it's not in easily identifiable boxes and bags.
TL,DR: Shopping trips due to lower sales taxes may be a contributing factor.
Lake Erie? Gettysburg? Hershey? Longwood Gardens? The Poconos? King of Prussia? The entireties of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh? Not to mention tons of beautiful wild areas, including deep forests and rugged mountains? People who think that Pennsylvania has nothing to offer have either never been here or are seriously ignorant. If anything, I'm surprised that PA is so low on the list, since coming here is much cheaper/more convenient for most Canadians than going to Hawaii or Arizona.
Many Canadians spend nights in Pennsylvania because it is on the way to places like NYC, Florida, and DC. Most of the trips are not to visit Pennsylvania itself.
I actually wondered about arizona, for all others I can think of reasons, and was not too hard to guess them. But arizona didn't cross my mind. Anybody has an explanation?
These stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt. As a Canadian who's been to the U.S. somewhere between 100 and 200 times, I can say that if I fly (maybe 30-40 times), it's easy enough to say what state I landed in and what passport (since that's recently become necessary) I travelled with. If I drive, it's easy enough for U.S. immigration to record which state I enter. But it's impossible in both cases to know where I've been subsequently. A huge percentage of Canadians live very close to the border and make trips by car, many passing through/staying in multiple states on single visits. Anyone from Atlantic Canada crossing into Maine on the way to Boston will go through New Hampshire. How will either N.H. or Massachusetts be counted? A Manitoban driving to Arizona will drive through multiple states. Same thing.
Right. But nobody's going to drive from Manitoba straight through to Arizona. How will the nights in South Dakota and Colorado (for example) be registered?
The WiFi in my hotel right now is painfully slow and I can't get the link to the source to load. I'd suggest clicking through and reading it. If it says "counts overnight stays only" I'm guessing that they sample registers of hotels, or, since the data is compiled by a Canadian organization, they might poll random samplings of Canadian citizens about their travel habits and then extrapolate the data.
... or they've secretly implanted GPS tracking chips in you. Never know.
Most of the people going to the Maine are Québécois that goes to the sea during summer. Almost all the baby boomers goes there at least once a year plus it's culturally close to us for the language and last century immigration.
With 18 seconds left, I typed in "Arizona," jokingly thinking "Canadians like the Grand Canyon, right?" That's how I wound up getting 10/10 on this. 0.o
I got it. But pretty amazed that Arizona comes in before... Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana, Illinois, Indiana.... I guess they just want to go somewhere warm?
Not hard to understand, I'm just surprised that there are more going there than to Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Washington, etc which are virtually right across the border.
Think it has to do with the small population of northern Ontario and Manitoba. The majority of Canadians live in Southern Ontario. Not a huge population in prairie Canada that would be heading south through Chicago and Minnie or Wisconsin.
I know this post was a long time ago but I just wanted to note: you mention that the cities of Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Washington DC are "easy" driving distance of southern Ontario. That is a STRETCH at best. Chicago is 5 hours from Windsor, the nearest Canadian city, and 8.5 hours from Toronto which is where most people live in southern Ontario. Washington DC is almost 8 hours from Niagara which is the nearest Canadian city, and almost 9 hours to Toronto. Every other city you mentioned is even further. Canadians are absolutely not just popping over the border for a quick jaunt to Illinois or Wisconsin if they are from southern Ontario.
Canadians of adequate means do often try to escape portions of the winter (sometimes, for retired people, the entire winter). But when they do, they certainly don't drive to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or Chicago. Canadians fly en masse to Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, as well as Florida, Arizona, and California. I was in Varadero airport in Cuba once when the next ten flights departing were all going to various Canadian destinations. And, by the way, many Canadians - not most - live in southern Ontario.
Thousands and thousands of Canadians go to Yuma every year so they can cross the border to Los Algodones, Baja California to go to the dentist. Seriously, the entire town is basically dental offices and restaurants.
I'm curious how this list would compare to "Most Visited U.S. States by Non-U.S. People in General." FL, NY, CA, and NV would certainly be on both lists, and probably HI and AZ as well. ME and MI presumably would not. WA and PA seem like border cases to me--WA certainly wouldn't be as high on a "whole world" list, but would it still be top ten?
If you see the link to the right of the quiz to my series "Country's Visitation Quizzes", you'll find several quizzes of interest. Included "Most Visited U.S. States by Europeans" and "Countries that visit Florida the most".
As you'll see from those quizzes, most of what you've said here comes true!
If you want to see LOTS of Canadian tourists, visit Cuba. They look very cute (and usually sunburned) on the beaches sporting their Che Guevara Tshirts.
As a Floridian, it doesn't surprise me at all that FL is #1. South Florida is full of Canadians, especially from Quebec. A large community across from where I live has upwards of about 50% of the parked cars you find there that are with Quebec plates. New York plates are very common here too.
I'm from Arizona. A ton of people from Canada and states with cold winters come here during the winter for the warm weather. It's one of the cheapest places to go if you want a warmer winter.
What's in Pennsylvania?
TL,DR: Shopping trips due to lower sales taxes may be a contributing factor.
... or they've secretly implanted GPS tracking chips in you. Never know.
As you'll see from those quizzes, most of what you've said here comes true!