Canada’s hotel industry reported slightly lower performance from the previous month, according to STR‘s May 2021 data.
While year-over-year percentage changes show significant increases because of comparison with a pandemic-affected period in 2020, the country’s performance levels remained well below the pre-pandemic comparable of May 2019:
- Occupancy: 28.1% (-58.6%)
- Average daily rate (ADR): CAD113.40 (-32.0%)
- Revenue per available room (RevPAR): CAD31.87 (-71.9%)
“Despite subdued performance in May due to continued travel restrictions and lockdown measures, RevPAR increased in each of the first three weeks of June, signaling the start of recovery now that provincial travel restrictions are in the process of being lifted,” said Laura Baxter, CoStar Group’s director of hospitality analytics for Canada. CoStar Group is the parent company of STR.
“As long as Canada keeps up the vaccine momentum and variants are controlled, hotel performance will continue to recover. Recovery will be led by pent-up leisure demand this summer. In Q3, we expect occupancy and ADR to reach 47% and CAD146, respectively, thus resulting in a 34% increase in RevPAR from Q3 2020. We anticipate a particularly strong recovery in smaller cities and resort hotels. Recovery in urban markets is expected to lag until corporate, group and international demand returns. Urban markets with large development pipelines will also experience downward pressure on recovery as new rooms are added to the inventory.”
“International demand plays an incredibly important role in the recovery process, and we expect a jump in hotel leisure and corporate demand once the U.S./Canada land border reopens. The relaxed quarantine requirements for those who are fully vaccinated is a step in the right direction. However, the catalyst for even stronger hotel performance recovery will be an extension of those loosened requirements for international travelers.”
Among the provinces and territories, Prince Edward Island recorded the lowest May occupancy level (16.8%), which was 71.5% below the pre-pandemic comparable.
Among the major markets, Calgary saw the lowest occupancy (21.3%), which was a 62.9% decline from 2019.
The highest occupancy among provinces was reported in Saskatchewan (33.3%), down 42.5% against 2019. At the market level, the highest occupancy was reported in Vancouver (33.1%), which decreased 60.3% from 2019.
