Hotel construction hits record high in 2019
Lodging Econometrics, an organization that studies and reports on real-estate trends in the hospitality sector, reported recently that hotel construction in Canada reached an all-time high in 2019.
At the close of the year, there were 305 projects in the hotel industry’s construction pipeline with a total of nearly 40,000 rooms. That represented a 15-percent increase in the number of projects and a 20-percent increase in the number of rooms under construction over the previous year.
Currently, there are under 96 projects with more than 12,000 rooms under construction. A further 120 project with 13,785 rooms are scheduled to start construction in the next 12 months, while 89 projects with more than 14,000 rooms are in early planning stages.
“Canada's hotel construction pipeline should remain strong and may continue to expand through 2020 as new project announcements also reached record counts in 2019,” says the organization. “Further, interest rates are expected to remain stable, unemployment rates are near record lows, and inflation is being held in check.”
Toronto is the country’s busiest market for hotel construction. Activity in the GTA reached an all-time high in 2019 with 55 projects and more than 7,600 rooms in the pipeline. This represented about 18 percent of the country’s total pipeline. Montreal had 18 projects with 2,400 rooms planned or underway. Niagara Falls had 13 projects and 3,655 rooms in its pipeline, and Ottawa had 13 projects and 1,976 rooms.
Lodging Econometrics expects Canada to have 60 new hotels with 6,208 rooms open in 2020, and a further 67 new hotels with 7,218 rooms opening in 2021.
Those hotel companies with the most projects and rooms under construction include Marriott International (64 projects, 8,082 rooms), Hilton Worldwide (60 projects,7,081 rooms) and InterContinental Hotels Group (55 projects, 5,288 rooms). Those three companies combined accounted for 59 percent of the projects in the total construction pipeline.
Top hotel brands under construction included IHG's Holiday Inn Express (33 projects, 3,241 rooms), Hampton by Hilton (29 projects, 3,174 rooms), Hyatt Place (16 projects, 2,421 rooms) and Marriott's TownePlace Suites (15 projects, 1,652 rooms).