New data show that it takes an extraordinary event for Metro Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels to fail to be the most occupied and priciest among major Canadian markets.
Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels' occupancy levels and room rates led all major Canadian markets in February, for the third consecutive month, according to CoStar, a global provider of real estate data, analytics and news.
The likely reason Toronto hotels last beat Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»for occupancy and pricing in November was that Toronto hosted six Taylor Swift concerts that month. Those mega-events pushed the average daily November hotel room rate in Toronto up 29 per cent, year-over-year, to $305.42, CoStar data show. Vancouver's average hotel room rate that month was only $233.38.
That pop singing sensation then performed three shows in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»in December, helping push Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotel occupancy and prices into the stratosphere. Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels' average daily room rates in December jumped 53.6 per cent, compared to the same month in 2023, to $319.28. The .
CoStar's new data shows Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels were on average 71.5-per-cent occupied in February, with a $216.16 average daily room rate. That compares with Toronto's 68.4-per-cent average hotel occupancy and $213.96 average daily room rate during the month.
The two Albertan cities of Edmonton and Calgary, in that order, endured the lowest average hotel-room occupancies and room rates in February, among major Canadian cities.
Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, told BIV an important metric for hoteliers is how fast they can grow their average daily room rates.
"What hoteliers need in order to drive margin is to drive the average room rate above that of inflation," he said."You want your top line to grow faster than your expense line."
Unfortunately for Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hoteliers, that did not happen in February.
Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels performed well compared with other major Canadian markets but their performance was not as strong as it was in February 2024.
The $216.16 average room rate that Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hotels charged in February was only 1.6 per cent higher than the rate they charged in February 2024. That lagged the province's . Occupancy, at 71.5 per cent in February, was two percentage points lower than the 73.5-per-cent occupancy rate in the same month one year earlier, according to CoStar.
Some evidence points to a decline in tourist visits in February.
Statistics Canada on March 10 released preliminary data showing 4.1 million international visitors arrived in Canada in February, down 10.9 per cent from February 2024.
That was the – since March 2021, when the comparable month in 2020 included the final weeks of pre-pandemic travel.
Freitag said one thing to keep in mind is that February only had 28 days, while in 2024 the month had 29 days. That extra day does not impact average occupancy levels or average daily room rates but it does impact the overall number of visitors entering the country that month.
He suggested that one tailwind Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»hoteliers might enjoy is the thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump's on-again-off-again tariffs, and threats of future tariffs. Many consumers are inspired to buy Canadian products, avoid travelling to the U.S. and to instead travel domestically.
Americans, Freitag said, do not feel the same political aversion when it comes to travelling to Canada. In fact, they given that the Canadian dollar one year ago was trading at almost $0.74, while it is now trading at around US$0.70. They therefore get about six-per-cent more per dollar, given that their greenback now buys nearly 1.43 in Canadian dollars versus a year ago when one U.S. dollar bought only a bit more than 1.35 in Canadian currency.
A headwind for hoteliers, however, is that there is evidence Canadian, and particularly B.C. consumers, .
Tourism advocates have long urged governments to speed rezonings and otherwise .
Many. Last week, Bonnis Properties revealed the latest plan for a new hotel in the city, .