Thunder Bay April Hotel Occupancy Remains Strong

Thunder Bay's April hotel performance continues to demonstrate growth with one of Canada's highest occupancy rates for the month.

April occupancy grew 4.8 points to 73% from 68.2% in April 2010 while RevPar increased 3.7 points to $67.68 from $65.28 a year ago. Average daily rate dropped however, from $95.74 to $92.71, signalling continued price competition within the marketplace that's ultimately benefiting the consumer. The Canadian average occupancy rate was 56.9%, up only .6 points from April 2010's 56.3%. Only the red hot Regina market and Yukon outperformed Thunder Bay on the occupancy level.

A continued strong meeting and convention segment, including the Northwestern Ontario Mines and Minerals Symposium, drove the April economy followed by a series of modest sport tourism events that, combined, contributed significantly to the city's overall occupancy performance. Thunder Bay's reputation provincially for hosting unique quality sport and corporate events combined with our significant air corridor coverage continues to be our strength in growing these important tourism segments.

Tourism Thunder Bay reports local accommodation performance from data provided by PKF Consulting. Tourism partners seeking greater detail of information should contact PKF directly

March Hotel Occupancy Continued its Occupancy Rate Rise.

March 2011 continued to be a strong month for Thunder Bay's accommodation sector with occupancy levels among the highest in Canada. Healthy increases are reported over March 2010, which in itself was stronger over the previous year. Lets face it. 2009 was a year most of the global tourism industry wants to forget anyway.

Hotel occupancy rose to 72%, up 2.7 points from 69.3 in March 2010. Average daily rate, however dipped to $92.32 from $96.54, signaling price competition among various properties to attract guests. This price competition translated into a slight dip in revenue per available room by 0.6% to $66.43 from $66.86 a year ago.
Overall, Thunder Bay's hotel performance continued to outshine the nation average of 57.6% and our growth rate outpaced the 1.6% national average. Revenue per available room locally, however, remains lower than the national average of $70.82.

A strong March is likely due to strong mining and health sciences related domestic corporate travel to the city, and reasonably strong sport tourism attendance for the annual Sibley Ski tour. While spring break brought some regional domestic leisure traffic into the city, the strong Canadian dollar has translated into many heading into Minnesota.

We report hotel performance based on data supplied by PKF Consulting. For our tourism partners seeking more detailed data, they can contact PKF directly.

September Hotel Occupancies Continue to Show Growth

September continued to see strong growth in the Thunder Bay accommodations sector, with occupancies, average daily rates and RevPar all seeing noticeable increases.

• Hotel occupancies rose 5.9% in September over the previous year to 83.8% from 77.8%.
• The Average daily rate rose slightly to $99.36 from $97.99 a year ago
• Revenue per available room rose a substantial 9.1% to $83.22 from $76.25

By contrast,the Canadian average occupancy rate was 70.2% or 2.4% greater than in 2009. Average daily room rate was $131.14, up.6% from 130.31 a year ago. Revenue per available room was $92,02, up 4.1% from 88.37.

This data is extracted from the PKF September 2010 National Market Report and we publish only the local and national data. We encourage our tourism partners looking for more depth of hotel performance data to contact PKF directly for their range of products and services at pkfcanada.com

Thunder Bay's occupancy rate remained one of the highest of any market in the country in September. However, the city is still a relative bargain, posting one of the lower daily average room rate and revenue per room rates nationally. This is certainly a competitive advantage, especially when bidding on cost sensitive sport and convention business. However, there may be room for some modest upward growth in room rates without compromising that advantage.

September proved to be a strong year on several fronts, buoyed by a stronger than normal fall touring leisure market and a strong corporate, meeting and convention market. Usually, September sees a bit of a downward turn locally as the summer leisure market drops and the fall convention travel market hasn't quite picked up from the summer vacation period.

We're pleased to see this upward trend continue, the result of a number of positive developments in the local economy around mining and health sciences, better air connectivity to the GTA with Porter, Westjet and Jazz, capital re investments in a number of properties and a more enhanced focus on the fall touring markets through OTMPC and AAA partnerships.

August Hotel Occupancy Continues to Show Optimism In challenging Environment

HVS Canada has released its August hotel performance for all major markets in Canada and once again, Thunder Bay's accommodation sector has continued to hold steady in a challenging international environment.

Room demand in August 2009 was up 0.8% while occupancy rates were down slightly to 77.6% from 77.7% in 2008. While flat performance is normally nothing to get too excited about, this has been the year the tourism industry was facing unprecedented challenges and everyone, including ourselves, was expecting to see some sort of notable decrease. This is the year where measuring our performance relative to other cities is just as important as measuring our performance to past years.

With most major markets reporting declines in August, including Windsor (down 36.7%) and Edmonton (down 10%), Thunder Bay was joined in reporting increases by Sudbury, Vancouver and Saskatoon.

Overall, Thunder Bay's year to date performance is down modestly 1.1% over the same 8 months of 2008. Once again, while a concern in normal years, it is the least significant decline of all but one hotel market - Saskatoon, who posted a 1% increase.

While summer corporate markets are typically softer, stronger mineral exploration and health sciences segments have likely given our corporate segment a summer boost. With respect to the traditionally strong summer segments of leisure, VFR and sport tourism there are likely a number of reasons market share has remained steady, including strong visiting friends and family travel to the city and a shift in our U.S. based campaigns with a focus on touring and avid outdoor seekers that brought stronger than expected US travel to the city in June and July.

Despite these positive performance indicators, we have to remain vigilant and continue to build traffic in both new and core existing markets. The release of these numbers has continuously created a positive buzz about the City's economy over the past few months and we are constantly asked at industry functions about the local environment. Maintaining the current positive buzz and using new media tools to promote more of this news has the effect of positioning the city more successfully as a destination of choice because we all know, people want to go where other people are going.

To see the full results, visit http://www.hvs.com/Library/Articles/?ac=canadian%20lodging