By Terry Ward
Hollywood, Florida (CNN) — On a sunny and warm late-February day at Richard’s Motel in Hollywood, Florida, guests mostly from Quebec and Ontario dipped into the swimming pool and gathered for morning coffee and conversation in a courtyard the hotel’s Quebecois owner calls the Parc de l’Amitié, or Friendship Park.
The motel’s aesthetic mixes Florida and the far north. Here a snow man statue and wooden fence covered with Canadian license plates, there a sea turtle statue and a tiki bar.
Only one thing seemed off on this balmy high-season morning — a Vacancy sign illuminated to the right of the motel’s office door.
Come winter, beach towns like this one dotting the Atlantic Coast stretch of Florida surrounding Fort Lauderdale have long brimmed with French Canadian tourists and other snowbirds who arrive for warmth and sunshine.
Alongside Florida’s famous beaches, they enjoy Canadian-owned restaurants serving some of their favorite foods, shows featuring some of Quebec’s biggest homegrown stars who fly in to perform and other glimmers of home that have sprung up in the area.
But this winter wasn’t what Richard’s Motel owner Richard Clavet and other hoteliers in the area had hoped for. Destinations like Greater Fort Lauderdale, long a draw for those seeking a winter warm-up, illustrate how conflicted many once-frequent Florida visitors feel about visiting now — and what a decline in visits means for local businesses.
“Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of issues. And surprisingly, we were expecting the Trump administration to come in — more prosperity, everything will be going great,” said Clavet, a dual Canadian and US citizen who said he voted for Trump in 2024.
February 2025 was one of his busiest months at the seven motels and extended-stay properties he owns in the area that largely target French Canadians, he said.
But when the tariffs on Canadian goods took effect in early March last year, Clavet said, the cancellations started rolling in — including from repeat guests who, come April, often reserve for the following winter before they’ve even started their drives back north to Canada.
“A lot of people started to cancel and they stopped reserving. A lot of them were, I would say, polite, and not necessarily saying their reason for cancelling, saying they got sick or making excuses instead,” Clavet said.
But some of his past guests were more honest about their motivations.
“One of them cancelled and we called him back and said, ‘Sir, you’re leaving $1,000 on the table, the $1000 deposit.’ And he was very firm. He said, ‘I’m not going over there with that dictator of yours,’” said Clavet, who called last spring a “disaster” due to all the cancelled bookings at his properties.
“The impact of Trump’s policies — or the perception of them — was enormous last March and April,” he said.
This winter season, too, saw a storm of cancellations as well as loyal guests from years past failing to re-book, said Clavet, with some opting to vacation in places like the Dominican Republic and Mexico instead.
He put all his efforts into marketing, offering special prices and posting photos on his Richard’s Motel Family of Lodgings Facebook page of guests enjoying the weekly “Soirée Hot-Dog” grill-outs or Bingo night gatherings under the palm trees in the Parc de l’Amitié, while it dumped snow up north.
“I’m working really hard to overcome the effect, but it’s serious,” said Clavet. He did manage to drum up some business and felt “satisfied” by his efforts.
He was hopeful for a late-season bump in bookings, too, after a Quebec Read more