Canada's hotel performance this summer has been historically strong, with August bringing in the highest occupancy for any month since August of 2014.
That same month, revenue per available room has reached over 200 Canadian dollars ($139.92 U.S. dollars) for the first time ever, according to CoStar data.
Canadian hoteliers can credit, in part, the increased animosity toward the United States due to President Donald Trump's trade policies that's led to more Canadians choosing not to visit or financially benefit their neighbor to the south.
"In July, rooms sold is up almost 4% compared to the same time last year — it's up 3.7% — and I think that is a clear indicator that the 'buy Canadian' sentiment translates into 'stay Canadian' as well, and that the Canadian leisure traveler is voting with their wallet and saying, 'Well, I want to go somewhere, so let me just stay within the country,'" said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics for CoStar.
There are other factors too — like the strength the U.S. dollar that makes traveling there more expensive for Canadians and wildfires that have grown occupancy in some regions — that have lead to a perfect storm for Canadian hotel performance, but only time will tell if the country is able to maintain performance through the fall and winter months.
Benefiting from momentum
For August, Canadian hotel occupancy was 80.7%, a 1.5% increase year over year and up from July's 77.6%. The average daily rate also increased to CA$250.18, a 6.1% year-over-year jump and slightly up from July's CA$248.50. Meanwhile, RevPAR reached a historic CA$202.01, which represented a 7.7% increase year over year and growth compared to July's CA$192.75.
Robyn Yenney, director of revenue management at British Columbia-based Prestige Hotels & Resorts, said she's seen performance up across the board for Prestige, which has 19 hotels across British Columbia.
"Summer has been really exceptional — both July and August," she said. "Starting back in May, we started to see the trends kick upward from what we were everybody was forecasting at the beginning of the year. So yeah, our occupancies were up from 69% to 77% in August."
Prestige has always attracted Canadian guests, Yenney said, but this year she said she's seen the impact of the "buy Canadian" movement. As a locally-owned company, Prestige has always had a community focus, and they haven't altered any marketing strategy to lean into this. It's all happened organically, she said.
"A lot of our customer base in general is Canadian, but it definitely is the Canadian numbers of guests that are increasing the most substantially," she said. "Our Okanagan properties have a little bit of increase in U.S. travel, but for us, it definitely seems like it's the Canadian market that's driving our business — both anecdotally and by the numbers that we're seeing."
Kyle Nantais, vice president of revenue optimization and strategies at InnVest Hotels, said that his company, which manages over 100 hotels across Canada, has seen an 11% year-over-year increase in RevPAR, and its their select-service hotels that are seeing outsized growth.
"We have [everything] from select-service to the full-service assets, but our select-service assets did about 18% growth in RevPAR year over year, in July," he said, explaining that for the first five months of the year, RevPAR was essentially flat. "June, just for example, we were 2.9% [growth] over last year."
Yenney said Prestige also saw growth in occupancy and ADR at some of the properties that are a bit more economical.
"That tells me ... that the middle class is traveling a little bit more again, so I think that market that we want to keep an eye on," she said.
Nantais said one hotel really stood out when it came to revenue performance. The Comfort Inn Edmundston in New Brunswick resides in a major crossing point for people from Ontario going to Atlantic Canada, Quebec and the U.S., so it acts as a bit of a barometer for how busy the East Coast will be in the summer.
"We noticed in June, roughly, we had 38% revenue growth year over year, which was phenomenal," he said. "So, that just gave us a good indication that it was going to be really strong in Atlantic Canada, and that it really helped with our rate positioning, because we knew that if that property is going to be so high that people were coming to Canada — whether it's the Americans coming up or Canadians were choosing Atlantic Canada as a destination. That particular asset ran 60% revenue growth year over year in July."
Nantais and Yenney both credited the wildfire activity in Canada as an occupancy driver this year, too.
"I think it was sort of like a momentum moment that everything fell into place and the hoteliers were able to drive revenues," Nantais said.
Regional successes
Canada is seeing hotel performance growth across the country, but some regions are performing better than others. For August, British Columbia reported the largest occupancy growth among provinces — up 6% to 87.2%, per CoStar data. Vancouver led the way among cities in that province, with the largest gains in occupancy — 4.6% increase to 91.9% — and RevPAR — 12% growth to CA$340.08.
In July, Manitoba posted the highest increases across the three key performance metrics: occupancy was up 14.8% to 80.9%, ADR increased 14.5% to CA$180.01, and RevPAR soared 31.5% to CA$145.71.
Stuart Back, chief operating officer of the Banff Jasper Collection by Pursuit, said that the Canadian Rockies region had a strong summer and that "demand has been strong, and it's really come from all all markets."
An experiential travel company with around a dozen hotels in Canada, Pursuit's Banff Jasper Collection has about half of its visitors driving in or coming from nearby, he said, so the company has always had a strong focus on Canadian travelers.
"This destination has benefited from kind of the perfect storm, because we've continued to be popular with international visitors and been very popular with Canadians choosing [to travel domestically] for various reasons — and it does not appear to be all 'buy Canadian.' Some of it also appears to be simply the cost of overseas travel and realizing that Canada has so many incredible things to offer," he said.
Also contributing to the perfect storm was The Canada Strong Pass, an initiative from the country's government that provided free or discounted admission to landmarks, museums and national parks from June 20 to Sept. 2. The free park access, Back pointed out, contributed to the spike in travelers to national park regions like Banff.
Nantais said InnVest's Banff properties saw "explosive" growth in occupancy — over 95% — and a longer booking window. Meanwhile, he said, Montreal struggled.
"Montreal itself has been pretty weak this year, particularly the Montreal airport," Nantais said, citing double digit declines year over year on revenue at the airport. "If you look at the whole Montreal region, just outside of Montreal, like Laval, increased its supply of hotels, so that hasn't been great. But if you look at the rest of Quebec, rural Quebec did really well."
What to expect from fall and winter
Hoteliers can be "cautiously optimistic" about the rest of the year, Nantais said. Leisure travel will slow after summer and shoulder season, but corporate travel has the potential to fill in some of those gaps.
"Unless there's any geopolitical changes, I think Canadians will still be focusing on traveling domestic," he said. "Canadians are still not choosing to go to the U.S., and we're getting some inbound from Europe. Other countries around the world are looking for an alternative destination of the U.S. I think that'll continue."
Back said Banff is definitely more of a summer destination but has grown its winter tourism as a ski hub and "winter wonderland."
"Winter is not our peak season, but it has got incrementally busier over the years," he said.
Key Canadian markets have some tough comps coming later this year, Freitag said, as Taylor Swift's Eras Tour drove occupancy in Toronto in November and Vancouver in December.
STR's forecast for Canada's full-year 2025 RevPAR is a growth of 1.4%, which more muted than what the summer has seen, but he said that he thinks the Canadians who travel to avoid the winter weather will still do so — they just might avoid the U.S.
"I guess the only uncertainty now is that, with all these tariffs coming into play, come September, October, how it's going to impact the industrial places in Canada," Nantais said. "I think that's our biggest fear — that once the leisure demand stops in September, will the corporate come back to the traditional levels? At this point, halfway through September, it's not looking bad, but [the fourth quarter] is a little bit slower."