The TopRanked.io Travel Affiliates Guide [+ Canadian Travel Opportunity]

Fellow affiliates.

Like many of you, I find Canada interesting for all sorts of reasons. (None of which make me want to travel there.)

But while the rest of you scratch your head over the pros/cons of a Saskatoon Totem Pole vs a Five-Legged Caribou are…

…I’m out here wondering where the affiliate opportunities are.

And this week, I found one.

TopRanked.io — The Best Travel Affiliate Programs Guide

This week, we’re going to look at what’s happening with Canadian tourism.

Hint: there’s an opportunity here.

But before we get there, a quick heads up.

If you wanna monetize in the travel niche, then you’re going to need to hook yourself up with some solid affiliate programs.

So where do you find such a guide?

Simple — you only need to head on over to TopRanked.io and check out our dedicated listing of the best travel affiliate programs.

Why TopRanked.io is the #1 Resource for Travel Affiliate Programs

Like we said last week in our 2026 FIFA World Cup Affiliate Guide, there are two big reasons why TopRanked.io is your best bet for finding a great affiliate program.

Numero 1 — unlike other directory sites, we don’t just randomly list a bunch of affiliate programs and call it a day. Nope. We property test and review each and every program you see on the site.

Numero 2 — We’re selective with what we list. Seriously. If you search our site, you’ll notice some very well known affiliate programs are missing. And that’s not just because we forgot. We simply chose not to list them because, for whatever reason, we didn’t think they were up to par.

In other words, if you want an actually-curated list of actually-reviewed affiliate programs, then TopRanked.io should be your #1 destination.

Affiliate News Takeaways — Canadian Travel Affiliate Opportunity

By now, it’s no secret that there’s probably been some sort of disruption to the number of Canadians heading over to the US.

Heck, just 2 weeks after Trump was inaugurated, the US Travel Association was already talking about possible 10% declines.

And that 10% estimate was just based on tariff backlash — it made zero attempt to address what was maybe Canada’s biggest gripe with its southern neighbours at the time…

One year on, of course, and the number turned out to be much worse.

If Statistics Canada is to be believed, the impact was actually closer to 25%.

But we all know what Canadian math is like.

Just kidding.

Although, there is a good reason to distrust the number somewhat. That’s because while the 25% decline number was derived from a simple metric (border crossings) that’s hard to get wrong (so long as you can count), that metric doesn’t really differentiate between “travel” and “entering/exiting a country”.

After all, all a (legal) border crossing is telling you is someone went in and out. It doesn’t tell you if it was a tourist crossing for a 2-month road trip across the States, or a Canadian trucker making a quick drop off of some car parts on the other side of the border.

So obviously, if you want to answer any questions about where Canadians are actually spending their vacation time, border crossings aren’t the perfect metric.

That’s why this article which appeared yesterday is kinda interesting.

Basically, instead of counting border crossings, the researchers in this study got hold of mobile phone data and tracked what Canadian devices were up to.

Turns out, the actual decline in Canadians spending time in the U.S. is actually much worse than 25%.

It’s closer to 42% once you actually start tracking where people are going.

And once you realise that Canadians were making 6.1 million trips per quarter (as of August 2025) and also spending around $5.7 billion during those trips (again, per quarter as of August 2025), you suddenly realize something.

42% of those numbers still works out to millions and billions.

Also, something else worth paying attention to here — those numbers were from August of last year.

That’s important here.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, it captures the summer vacation season.

And second, travel to the U.S. at the time was only down “10.8% year over year” at the time.

Now, it’s down about 4x that, and we’re fast approaching the summer vacation season.

And you know what that means… right?

Yep — Canadians are about to start dreaming of warmer climates again once they remember their summer is literally one random afternoon where the stars aligned.

And that, to me, smells like an affiliate opportunity.

Think of it like this.

There’s probably a bunch of Canadians for whom summer vacation meant some default trip to some ‘family favorite’ location south of the border.

And a bunch of those families (if the latest data on Canadian visits to the U.S. is to be believed) are about to start boycotting those locations and start looking for new places to visit.

And while some people will already have made up their minds…

…plenty more are about to start looking for things like “best vacation destination alternative to miami not in USA not too far from Canada good exchange rate with loonie eh?”

Or maybe not.

After all, there could be a bunch of other effects at play here.

I mean, maybe Canada waking up to the travel brochure vs reality thing also hit at the same time…

So maybe they’re now realizing they’ve already got everything in their own backyard.

Or maybe it’s just that the whole cost of living thing finally caught up with Canadians and now they’re prioritizing other things besides travel.

Nah.

Just kidding.

Canadians are actually travelling plenty.

In fact, in January of this year, Canadians taking trips to countries other than the USA were actually up by 10.7% compared to January 2025.

And that was in January.

In case you’ve forgotten, in January 2025, the whole “Canadian’s must boycott the USA because it’s your patriotic duty, eh” thing was barely even a thing, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens once summer travel really starts to kick off.

Now, as for where Canadians might actually like to travel, there’s already some (limited) data that might be able to help you out here. In a survey ahead of last Winter’s travel season, a whopping 21% said they planned to head to Mexico.

And that kinda makes sense right?

It’s not the US.

But it’s not really much further than the US.

But that’s just one idea — I’m sure there are plenty more destinations.

Takeaway

The opportunity here is simple.

Canada has 2 big “peak” travel seasons.

The first is the winter period that kicks off in December (because who wants to stay in Canada during winter, right?).

And the second kicks off in late June and lasts through to late August (because shool’s out, families can travel together, weather’s good, etc.).

And with “I don’t wanna travel to the US” sentiment as high as it apparently is, that upcoming travel peak looks like a big fat affiliate opportunity.

All you gotta do is help Canadians plan their “not in the US” summer trip… and drop a few handy links along the way.
If you don’t know what kind of links to drop, then TopRanked’s listing of top travel affiliate programs should help.

Closing Thought

When I was looking through the data on Canadian travellers, I noticed one really interesting stat.

When asked about why they don’t want to travel to the US, one of the most popular responses was concerns about border encounters.

What was most interesting, however, was how much higher those concerns were among Canadians who hadn’t travelled to the US recently. [source]

Yep, basically, the more someone had travelled to the US in the last 12 months, the less likely they were to be afraid of the big bad border security officer.

And I think there’s a good takeaway there for all of us.

Until we’ve tried something, it’s easy to get the wrong impression.

In this case, Canadians simply thought it was too scary — that they were going to be harassed/intimidated/detained/whatever by border security.

But there are plenty of other false beliefs we can hold about all sorts of things we’re not exposed to.

Too hard.

Not worth it.

It’s boring.

You name it — there are plenty of disguised excuses that can hold you back.

So here’s your challenge for this week — try exposing yourself to something you’ve hesitated trying because it was “too hard”, “too scary”, “not worth my time”, or some other excuse.

You might be pleasantly surprised.

[And if you need help finding an idea here, why not try out spending a couple of months as a travel affiliate. After all, we’ve already taken care of one of the hardest parts — finding good affiliate programs — with our directory of the best travel affiliate programs.]

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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