2020: A year like no other in the Canadian Hotel Industry, a year to capitalize on fine tuning operations to be more efficient for when demand returns in 2021.
Through Q3 2020, RevPar in Canada continues to deteriorate, declining 61% over 2019. Hotels in the luxury segment and those with more than 500 rooms have taken the brunt of the impact. Covid-19 is not affecting markets uniformly across the country. The Okanagan and Northern Ontario markets have fared best with decreases of 33% and 35% while the hardest hit market, Downtown Montreal has a RevPAR decline close to 80%. With the pandemic not slowing, we don’t foresee improvement until the spring.
Through Q2 2020 the Canadian lodging industry is experiencing a RevPAR decrease of close to 55%. The luxury segment and hotels with more than 500 rooms have taken the brunt of the Covid-19 impact on lodging demand. The summer leisure domestic demand should prove a short term uptick in Q3.
Hotel demand held steady in 2019 however new inventory caused national occupancy to decline by 1 point to 65%. Average rate growth mitigated the impact leading to a virtually flat RevPAR year.
The Canadian Lodging Industry experienced 7.0% RevPAR growth through June 2017. Wow! ADR is the main contributor particularly in the Luxury segment caused by the low dollar with Ontario and British Columbia leading the pack.
In the first quarter of 2017, the Canadian lodging market continues to fire on all cylinders with RevPAR growth outpacing 2016 growth. Alberta and Newfoundland are charting positive growth for the first time in three years!
This is a time of contrasts in the Canadian Lodging Market. Resource based markets are suffering due to low oil prices, however leisure markets, most particularly in Luxury and Resort markets are benefiting from demand induced by the low-oil Loonie.