Two thirds of Canadian drivers say high gas prices will cancel or limit summer road trips after the Strait of Hormuz closure. RV rental platform RVezy CEO confirms bookings stalled in March. The sector read-through hits RV manufacturers, campgrounds and roadside businesses.
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The Strait of Hormuz closure in March sent oil prices to a three-year high and Canadian gas prices nearly 30% above the spring of 2025. Two thirds of Canadian drivers now say those prices will force 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.
Tara McAndrew, a travel blogger based in Kitchener, Ont., had planned an ambitious Pan-American Highway journey this year in her 2014 Dodge Ram Promaster camper van, which she calls Betty White. High gas costs and repair bills have pinned her closer to home. “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.”
Michael McNaught, chief executive of Ottawa-based peer-to-peer RV rental platform RVezy Inc., said his business saw a strong start to 2026 booking season. Then March rolled around. “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.”
The read-through cuts across several parts of the travel and leisure sector. RV rental platforms, campground operators, roadside attractions and even auto repair shops all depend on the summer road trip as a reliable demand driver. When gas prices erase the cost advantage of driving versus flying, the entire chain feels it.
For public companies exposed to the RV space – manufacturers, dealers and rental aggregators – the Probe Survey data and McNaught’s anecdote offer an early warning. Booking momentum that looked strong in January and February reversed sharply in March, and the summer peak is usually the make-or-break period. If the cancellation rate holds at two thirds, revenues tied to road trip travel could take a material hit.
The mechanism is simple: a sustained 30% gas price increase raises the variable cost per mile by roughly the same percentage. For a family trip from Toronto to Vancouver and back, that can add hundreds of dollars to the total. At that point, the economics of driving collapse versus a flight-and-hotel combination, especially when travel time is factored in.
What would confirm the trend is a second data point – either from a publicly traded RV company’s early summer booking call or from a fuel retailer reporting lower volume on major highway corridors. A reversal would require oil prices to fall back below the levels that triggered the spike, which in turn depends on the Strait of Hormuz reopening to normal traffic. The Iranian closure remains in place as of Tuesday. No date has been set for negotiations.
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