Publications & Events

Limited-Service hotels are leading the recovery in 2021 with YTD June showing higher occupancy than in 2020 and RevPAR down only just over $1. Full-Service hotels face greater challenges but the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to shine!

Due to travel restrictions, Staycations flourished as one of the few remaining sources of leisure demand. We interviewed hospitality experts and conducted a survey to gather data on consumers’ behavior and hoteliers’ response with regards to Staycations in Canada and beyond. Through this article, we share innovative strategies hoteliers can use to develop competing Staycation packages aiming to attract one of the identified Staycations subsegments: Dreamers, Explorers and Business Staycationers.

The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a substantial blow to Detroit. However, the city had one of the lowest RevPAR declines in 2020 among the top 25 markets, with only four leisure-oriented markets performing better. Is this a sign of Detroit’s famous resiliency, or was it merely the fact that Metro Detroit had less to lose?

Hoteliers across the globe are repurposing hotel properties to emerge out of the crisis. This article discusses a few such instances.

Towards the end of first quarter of 2021, the Canadian Hotel industry has begun to see slight improvement in demand; Western Canada led the strongest demand improvement over 2020 while the Atlantic bubble continues to deliver a devastating impact to the market.

As we observe World Autism Awareness Day, we want to highlight what our industry can do to help support individuals with autism. To better understand the diversity challenges, growing diversity programs, and opportunities to be more inclusive within the hospitality industry, we interviewed the founders of Autism Double-Checked, an organization that provides autism-specific training to hotel staff to create more autism-friendly travel experiences.

Declining oil and gas prices since 2014 have largely resulted in an economic retrogression in Alaska. Aside from the oil and gas industry, the tourism industry is one of the largest private-sector groups of employers in the state and accounts for one of every eight jobs. Therefore, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental to the local economy. While the widespread availability of a vaccine has ignited hope, tourism recovery faces some obstacles in 2021.

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.

The Downtown Buffalo lodging market is almost unrecognizable from where it was just a decade ago. This article reviews how the market has changed, discusses the impact of the pandemic and related economic recession, and looks to what is next for the Nickel City.

The HVS Guide to Canadian Hotel Management Contracts presents the results of an extensive review of hotel management agreements conducted across Canada, in addition to offering an in-depth understanding of the key terms and clauses of such agreements. All the management contracts analyzed for this survey were in place prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. At this stage, given the disruption to the industry and the unprecedented levels of distress, current events may have a longer-term impact on the key terms of management contracts and owner-operator relationships, most importantly on the concept of “force majeure.”

In Canada, 70% of hotels, representing roughly half of all guestroom inventory, are currently independent. However, most of the new hotels now being developed are associated with a brand. Consequently, the percentage of the supply that is branded is growing. The emergence of soft brands as an option for both established independent hotels and new developments is also contributing to the growth in branded supply. Given the number of first-time hotel developers that have entered the Canadian hotel industry, the need for education on the highly complex terms of management contracts and assistance in the negotiation process is greater than ever.

Hotel management contracts involve either brand management, in which the franchise company provides both the brand and management services, or third-party hotel management, whereby a hotel management company provides just management services for independent or franchised hotels. For full-service, upper-upscale, and luxury properties, international brands provide management services and forgo the royalty portion of their franchise fees in favour of a base management fee and an incentive management fee. Recently, brands have also begun offering management services in the limited- and select-service upscale hotel tier because there is a dearth of third-party hotel management companies in Canada.

Third-party management companies offer their services for a predetermined time period in exchange for a base management fee and an incentive fee. Currently, there are only a handful of third-party management companies in Canada, many with their roots in the United States. Given the recent growth in hotel development, often involving first-time developers, successful hotel owners in Canada are offering their local expertise through third-party management services in an effort to also fill this void.

Owners are becoming better educated and are hiring hotel consultants, such as HVS, as a way to gain greater power in the management-contract-negotiation process and ensure that they are receiving customized, fair, and equitable hotel management terms based on the merits of the specific development.

The 2020 HVS Guide to Canadian Hotel Management Contracts by Monique Rosszell and Anastasia Ivanova is intended as a reference document for the key terms, clauses, and trends in management contracts found across the country. We hope this guide can serve the industry as a reference to make better decisions and building more balanced relationships between owners and operators.

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