Rise in American tourists signing up for Maine to Nova Scotia ferry service

HALIFAX — The operator of the ferry service between Nova Scotia and Maine says bookings for the new season are up about 30 per cent over last year with renewed interest from Americans looking to travel to Canada.

Bay Ferries Ltd., which operates The CAT ferry between Yarmouth, N.S., and Bar Harbor, Maine, said it has almost 17,800 reservations for the sailing season that began Thursday morning. That’s about 5,000 more bookings than the service had at the same time last year.

Mark Wilson, the ferry company’s CEO, says 2026 is shaping up to be a strong rebound year as more Americans book the vehicle and passenger ferry. He says U.S. travellers traditionally make up 75 to 80 per cent of ridership, and the number is climbing.

“We’re still seeing … increased numbers on that up into the 85 per cent range, which is really what the service is about, bringing high-value tourists into Nova Scotia and the Maritimes,” he said in an interview.

The Nova Scotia ferry link traces its roots back to the 1880s but service has been rocky in recent years. Issues with funding, operators and ports have scuttled several sailing seasons as did the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics say the provincial subsidy of about $21 million a year — about $620 per passenger in 2024 — isn’t worth the cost, while tourism operators in the relatively isolated Yarmouth area see it as an economic lifeline.

In 2025 the ferry carried 39,700 passengers between May and October. That was down about 19.5 per cent from the 49,300 people who took the service in 2024. The company said the decline was mainly attributed to fewer Canadians travelling to the U.S. as President Donald Trump launched a trade war and talked about annexing the country.

Increasing numbers of U.S. visitors are part of a national trend. Statistics Canada says U.S. trips to Canada were up four per cent in March with 1.1 million Americans crossing the border by vehicle or air compared to the same period in 2025. It was the second consecutive month of year-over-year increases after 12 months of declines.

Trips by Canadians to the U.S., however, are down. StatCan says two million Canadians returned from the U.S. in March, a 7.6 per cent year-over-year decline. Meanwhile, Canadian return trips from overseas destinations were up 4.9 per cent.

“Nova Scotia needs every possible option available to bring visitors to our province and we need predictability and stability of the transportation network,” Darlene Grant Fiander, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Nova Scotia, said in a statement.

This is the last season in Bay Ferries’ 10-year contract with the province to operate the service. Public Works Minister Fred Tilley declined to say last week if the government planned to put the contract out to tender or negotiate directly with the current operator.

“We want to make sure that we get the best solution for Nova Scotians, and so (staff is) right in the middle of figuring that out now. We understand the urgency,” he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

The Cat is a high-speed catamaran leased from the U.S. Navy and crewed by Americans. Wilson suggested Thursday there may be an option to sail the vessel under a Canadian flag, which would allow it to operate with a Canadian crew.

“I think that there can be options on this vessel,” he said, noting that talks with the province are ongoing.

The provincial government released a long-awaited economic study of the service in February that said nearly every ferry route in the world receives government subsidies and Nova Scotia’s support is worth the cost.

It said about 77 per cent of ferry passengers spend time in the Yarmouth area, but benefits are seen throughout the province. About half of all travellers visit the Annapolis Valley and Halifax regions and about 29 per cent make it to Cape Breton Island, a drive of nearly 600 kilometres from the ferry terminal. The ferry generates between $31 million and $42 million a year in gross domestic product, depending on how it’s measured, said the report.

The former NDP government cancelled the ferry service in 2009 to save money, prompting outrage from tourism operators as the southwest Nova Scotia area lost its only international link and visitor numbers plummeted.

The service returned in 2014 linking Yarmouth to Portland, Maine, instead of the previous landing point at Bar Harbor. It used the Nova Star, a cruise-style ferry that missed passenger targets and failed after one year. In 2016 the province hired Bay Ferries to run the service with the faster CAT ferry. Moving the American port of call from Portland back to Bar Harbor resulted in the loss of the 2019 sailing season and the COVID-19 pandemic suspended the service again in 2020, before it resumed in 2022.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2026.

Devin Stevens, The Canadian Press