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Hotel construction powers up in Vancouver
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Anticipated demand for hotel rooms in Vancouver up to and after the Olympics,
suggests that these new hotel’s success won’t be much in doubt.
“We expect that the demand will grow stronger than the supply,” said
Tourism
Vancouver executive vice-president Paul Vallee in a recent interview.
Though demand forecasts aren’t available for lodging demand, anecdotal evidence
suggests that there’s room for growth in the market.
Vallee says it’s been a decade since the last boom in hotel construction, during
the late 1990s.
The market absorbed the glut of new supply delivered during that period and
space has since emerged for new developments – primarily small-scale boutique
hotels offering a more intimate, luxurious experience.
Here are some of the new Hotel projects to watch
More than 1,300 new hotel rooms are planned for
downtown
Vancouver in the next two years. Greater Vancouver as a whole has 2,559
rooms planned or in various stages of development, a significant increase of
10.6 per cent beyond the current tally of 24,091 rooms.
The Vancouver projects include:
The $60 million, 220-room Coast Coal Harbour Resort
The $400 million restoration and expansion of the
Hotel
Georgia
The 415-suite Fairmont Pacific Rim project adjacent to the Vancouver Convention
Centre expansion
The 60-storey Shangri-La project on West Georgia Street.
The largest project outside Vancouver is the redevelopment of the Radisson site
in Burnaby, where Gateway Casinos is building the
Villa
Casino and Convention Centre with a 200-unit Delta-managed hotel slated to
open in summer 2009.
Scott Calvert, vice-president responsible for property development with Gateway,
said the hotel is intended to serve more than just casino visitors.
Rather, it is part of what he terms a mixed-use entertainment complex that
includes a convention centre, casino and other amenities.
The hotel itself is being repositioned as a business-class hotel in an area
where there aren’t many other properties of a similar calibre, he said.
The top three floors will have 35 suites designed for inclusion in Delta’s
business-class Signature Club, for example.
“We think there’s a good strong market in this area for business lodging and
business use in our convention centre as well,” Calvert said.
While hotel development can be challenging because of the vagaries of demand,
Calvert said the hotel’s proximity to Highway 1 has already yielded a high
volume of enquiries regarding bookings.
In Richmond near the
Vancouver Airport Sandman Hotels is about to open their new Signature Hotel.
A new 12-storey
hotel and parkade would be located directly across the street from
River Rock Casino on River Road. Immediately south of that would be a bus
loop and the Canada Line's Bridgeport Station.
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