For the first time since November, when Toronto hosted six Taylor Swift concerts, the city has edged out Vancouver as the priciest major market in Canada for hotel rooms.
Metro Toronto's average hotel room went for $242.30 in March, according to CoStar, a global provider of real estate data, analytics and news. That was about 12 per cent more than the $216.26 per night that Metro Vancouver hotels charged on average during the month, CoStar's data showed.
That significant price differential in March was enough for Metro Toronto to also top Metro Vancouver for hotel room prices on a year-to-date basis, according to CoStar. That firm calculated an average $221.77 nightly price for a hotel room in Toronto in the first three months of 2025, compared with an average $214.54 cost per night for a hotel room in Vancouver in that same timeframe.
It is hotel occupancy where Metro Vancouver continues to reign supreme among major markets.
Vancouver is not the only B.C. city with high hotel occupancy, however.
Victoria topped all Canadian cities with its hotels having a 77.2-per-cent average nightly occupancy rate, according to CoStar.
CoStar data showed Metro Vancouver hotels as being 72-per-cent filled on average per night in March, compared with Metro Toronto hotels only being 70.4-per-cent filled each night on average that month. Year-to-date, Metro Vancouver hotels were also more filled each night on average than were counterparts in Hogtown: 67.9 per cent, compared to 66.1 per cent.
Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, told BIV that higher occupancy usually means higher room rates.
Sometimes there are nights within months where occupancy is particularly high and room rates soar, thereby distorting the monthly average.
Another possible reason Metro Toronto hotels had higher average room rates despite lower average occupancy during the month was a large conference in early March.
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada attracted about 27,000 people to Toronto.
“That could have driven room rates up,” Freitag said.
Vancouver's shortage of hotel rooms is well documented.
Destination Vancouver in 2023 estimated that the city of Vancouver needs an additional 10,000 hotel rooms by 2050. Earlier this month Destination Vancouver and the BC Hotel Association released a report providing recommendations to spur new hotel development, dubbed the Hotel Community Impact Assessment report.
Some good news for those wanting more hotel rooms in Vancouver is that there are new hotel projects underway.
Last month, Bonnis Properties revealed a plan for a new hotel in the Granville entertainment district, above the Commodore Ballroom. Also last month, Vancouver's Reliance Properties and Montreal's Germain Hotels announced a plan to convert a 12-storey office building at 1111 West Hastings Street into a 180-room boutique hotel.
The two companies would each own a 50-per-cent stake in the hotel with Germain managing it, Reliance Properties CEO Jon Stovell told BIV.
The site is zoned to allow hotel use as well as office, so no rezoning is needed.
"It would be just [needing] a minor development permit, just for any outside related work, and a building permit," he said. "It's very fast."
