If you’ve been sitting in your weekly revenue meeting lately, wondering why this week looks incredible and next week looks like a ghost town — you’re not imagining things. British Columbia hotel performance in 2026 is showing real whiplash. Across the province, results are volatile and hyper-local, with some markets surging while others struggle to keep pace. The market isn’t crashing, and it isn’t booming across the board either — but it is demanding more effort from everyone, from owners and investors to sales directors and frontline teams.

Let’s talk about what’s actually happening.

BC Is Outperforming the Rest of Canada — But Don’t Get Too Comfortable.

Nationally, the numbers are solid but unspectacular. Canadian hotels closed 2025 at a 66.1% occupancy rate, with ADR up 3.5% to $216.10 and RevPAR hitting a record $142.89. For 2026, forecasters are calling for modest RevPAR growth of about 0.6%, with occupancy hovering around 66%. British Columbia, though? We’re playing a different game. Provincial occupancy is sitting around 70%, ADR is up at $252, and RevPAR is tracking at $178. A big driver here is the “Canada-first” mindset that’s taken hold — Canadians are increasingly choosing to travel domestically amid geopolitical uncertainty and a wobbly dollar. Add in the fact that wildfire impacts have been more contained than in recent years, and the Okanagan, Interior, and Vancouver Island markets have held strong through peak season. Tourism is generating $23 billion in gross revenue provincially and contributing nearly $8 billion to BC’s GDP — supporting over 113,000 jobs and 16,925 businesses.

Great news, right? Sure — but province-wide averages can be misleading. A 70% average means very little if your property is pacing behind its comp set.

It Depends Entirely on Where You Are

Here’s where it gets interesting. Vancouver Downtown is arguably the strongest hotel submarket in the country. Per-room values hit $713,300 in 2025, with projections reaching $837,300 by 2028 — giving it a Hotel Valuation Index of 8.50, the highest nationally. With Amazon, Microsoft, and SAP anchoring the tech sector, 11 million tourists annually, and only 590 new rooms expected downtown through 2028, supply simply can’t keep up with demand.

Victoria is a similar story — per-room values surged 51.7% between 2019 and 2024, on track to hit $432,900 per key by 2028. The city lost roughly 2,000 hotel rooms over the past decade, and when the province cracked down on short-term rentals in May 2024, that supply tightened further. The result? August occupancy hit 94.3% with ADRs climbing above $396. If you’re operating in Victoria, your job right now is aggressive yielding and smart minimum-stay strategies on peak nights.

Contrast that with interior highway properties or suburban select-service hotels in Surrey, Burnaby, or Richmond. These markets are far more competitive. Kamloops alone has 238 active Airbnb listings keeping the pressure on. Properties that historically coast on industrial crews or price-sensitive corporate travel are working a lot harder to fill rooms.

Group Business Has Changed — Full Stop

Here’s a hard truth for sales teams: the group booking patterns you relied on three years ago don’t exist anymore. Blocks are washing at higher rates. Planners are waiting until inside 30 days to commit. You’re getting more “pencil us in for 40 rooms, and we’ll figure out the rest later” conversations — and then watching those blocks get recut at the last minute.

Social groups, sports teams, and small corporate meetings are all exhibiting this behaviour. Large associations and government groups remain reliable, but they can’t carry out the whole forecast. The takeaway here is straightforward: active block management is non-negotiable now. Enforce cutoff dates, watch pickup daily, and always have a backfill strategy ready for FIT or leisure demand.

The FIFA World Cup: Massive Upside, Real Risk

Vancouver hosts seven World Cup matches at BC Place between June 13 and July 7, with up to 45,000 tourists expected, and over 1 million tourist nights projected across the tournament. Metro Vancouver has approximately 25,584 hotel rooms available, and rate premiums are already wild — Vancouver is seeing a 54.55% spike in base pricing for match nights, the highest among North American host cities.

But here’s the honest warning: don’t count on FIFA room blocks as guaranteed revenue. When federations release unused VIP and media holds back to properties, it can create sudden inventory gluts – which is now the case! Hotels that treat those blocks as sold-out nights without a contingency plan are going to scramble. Build your backfill strategy now, not in July.

Corporate Travel: Sell the Value, Not the Room

Corporate budgets are tighter, and trip approvals are harder to get. Routine business travel has been quietly replaced by Zoom/Teams calls, and every trip now needs a business case. For properties leaning on negotiated corporate accounts, that means fewer midweek nights from your top accounts — and pushback on rates during RFP season.

The shift here is to stop selling the room and start selling the package. Complimentary parking, breakfast credits, fast Wi-Fi, and discounted meeting space are the tools that make a trip easy to approve. Emphasize productivity: quiet rooms, ergonomic workspaces, digital check-in, and easy airport access. That’s the pitch that wins in 2026. The BC hotel market has real momentum — but it’s uneven, unpredictable, and requires sharper, more localized thinking than ever before. The properties that will win this year are the ones leaning into the details, not waiting for the market to do the work for them.

For more sales advice, contact Brent O’Connor – brent.o@telus.net