Tara McAndrew’s ultimate road trip is on the ambitious side: First, driving the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina, then spending six months “puttering around” in Ireland and finishing it off by circling Europe in her beloved camper van. “I absolutely love (being on the road). It is hands down my favourite way to travel,” the 38-year-old Kitchener, Ont.-based travel blogger said. “You feel like a turtle, like you’ve got your home on your back with you.” But high gas prices and the cost of repairs for her 2014 Dodge Ram Promaster — affectionately dubbed “Betty White” — have made McAndrew rein in her plans this year. “As a solo traveller, it’s quite difficult to afford travelling this summer,” she said. “I have been keeping it pretty close to home, just to help with costs.” The road trip has long been a summer staple for middle-income Canadians itching to explore new destinations without breaking the bank. But what was once an affordable alternative to a big-ticket vacation has become more costly as gas prices have soared. In March, in response to U.S. strikes, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil travels. Oil prices jumped to a three-year high and Canadian gas prices spiked to levels nearly 30 per cent above the spring of 2025. This led two thirds of Canadian drivers to say high gas prices would prompt them to cancel or limit road trips this summer, according to a Probe Research survey for the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada (TRAC) released in May. Michael McNaught, chief executive of peer-to-peer recreational vehicle rental platform RVezy Inc., based in Ottawa, said his business initially saw a massive surge in the beginning of 2026 when booking season kicked off for the summer. “Then March rolled around, and … you can almost see the date where things stalled,” McNaught said. “It’s almost as if people had their credit cards in their hand, and then all of a sudden when … oil prices shot up, everybody pressed the pause button.” McNaught said RVezy’s surveys indicate Canadians are still interested in travelling, but they are selecting destinations closer to home instead, such as local music festivals, campgrounds and provincial parks just a couple of hours’ drive away. “During (these) strange economic periods, people still vacation — they just vacation differently,” he said. “It’s almost like a reimagining of the road trip.” Though the global price of crude dropped last week and could drive oil prices lower in the coming months, analysts say Canadians still need to prepare for relatively high prices at the pump this summer as energy markets play catch up. “The reckoning is going to be measured in months and years, not in days and weeks,” said Dan McTeague, president at advocacy group Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAE), who anticipates the national average for gas prices will hover around the $1.55 mark over the summer, “nowhere near where we were last summer at $1.30 to $1.35.” McTeague said he believes gas prices will remain elevated enough to affect travel decisions in the coming months. He recounted visiting Bobcaygeon, Ont., recently. “I’ve been (visiting) there for 60 years and I’ve never seen so few boats on the lake,” he said. “Although things are better, they’re nowhere near where people can afford the luxury of … making those long trips without considering the cost of energy and food.” Leisure travel is a discretionary item, said Lorn Sheehan, a professor with the faculty of management at Dalhousie University whose research focuses on tourism and travel. “As you raise the price on anything, basic consumer economics dictate that consumption will go down and that’s especially true for what we call discretionary items,” he said. “Having said that, most people now see travel as something that they really prioritize.” Sheehan said he anticipates some lower-income and middle-income Canadians may scale back the length of their road trips, but that higher-income Canadians will continue to travel as usual. There is another factor at play outside of costs: fewer Canadians are willing to spend their dollars in the United States. Canadians who were once willing to drive eight hours to cross the border are now cutting back their drive times to four or five hours to explore their own province, said Wayne Smith, a professor and the director at the Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Research at Toronto Metropolitan University. Windsor, which sits across from Detroit, typically sees traffic from Canadians driving across the border. But Gordon Orr, chief executive of Tourism Windsor Essex Pelee Island, worries a U.S. travel boycott among Canadians, coupled with higher gas prices, could curb tourism demand this year. As a result, the city has invested $500,000 into Experience Windsor, a summer event series that aims to offer experiences to Essex County residents who can’t afford a longer trips. Other places that depend on “rubber tire tourism,” such as the Thunder Bay area, could be hit harder by gas prices as well, Smith said. “The road trip where you get into an RV and go across the country is really expensive these days.” Eleonore Hamm, president of the Recreation Vehicle Dealers Association (RVDA) of Canada, said new unit sales were down 13.5 per cent year over year in April. Motorhome sales plunged 31.5 per cent, while sales of towable RVs were down 11.5 per cent. Hamm said larger RVs, which have more expensive fuel consumption, aren’t seeing as much demand this year, whereas the bulk of the market is coming from trailers. These typically get towed behind a vehicle and parked in campsites. Instead of the big cross-country drive to the Maritimes or the Rockies, RVezy’s McNaught said travellers are opting for “delivered trips,” where they drive about 100 to 200 kilometres from their home in their own cars and then get a trailer delivered to the campsite where they stay. These delivered trips are up about 20 per cent year over year for his agency, while demand for motor homes fell to about five per cent less than last year, which is “reflective of the price of gas,” McNaught said. He is also seeing people confirm their bookings closer to the date, within 30 days instead of 60 or 90 days, as they monitor where gas prices go, he said. Dalhousie’s Sheehan said another factor that could affect travel plans is the type of vehicle driven, with those who own electric vehicles benefiting from cost savings. The destination or province of travel is another factor, he said. In Ontario, the average gas price is $1.56 per litre, the lowest across the provinces, compared with British Columbia at $1.77 and Newfoundland at $1.87, according to June 29 data from gas station search platform GasBuddy. This year, the national average gas price surged as high as $1.90 per litre in May, but has since dropped nearly 15 per cent to about $1.63 per tire in June, according to GasBuddy. In total, a one-way cross-country road trip in a 2022 Honda Civic LX with stops in a major city of each province would set a road tripper back at least $845 in gas prices, GasBuddy’s calculations show. Travel blogger McAndrew is making only one road trip this year, to visit family in Northern Ontario for her grandfather’s 100th birthday. She estimates the trip will take her about eight hours each way and cost about $400 in gas. Most respondents to the TRAC survey said they still planned to take at least one day or overnight trip (81 per cent), and 70 per cent said high gas prices represent the “new normal.” Guess Where Trips Inc., a London, Ont.-based business that provides one-day “surprise” road trips in a self-guided format for travellers, has seen sales jump 20 per cent compared with last year, according to founder Jessica Off. “We’re seeing the same type of questions as we did with COVID,” said Off, with people asking for destinations closer to home. Off said the company started in 2020 as an overnight trip agency but made the pivot to the one-day format — largely focusing on 2 1/2- to 3 1/3-hour driving destinations — when the pandemic hit. Off said new customers find her company out of concern about high gas and hotel prices. “Our name will come up as an alternative to those more expensive getaways.” • Email: slouis@postmedia.com On the fuel frontlines: A day inside an Alberta gas station during an energy crisisBank of Canada to hold on rates as 33% gas inflation masks weak economy, say economists