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McTeague said he believes gas prices will remain elevated enough to affect travel decisions in the coming months.

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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.”

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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.

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“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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.