Calgary hotels set summer record
‘Stars aligned’ with major boost over 2016 stats
The number of hotel rooms filled in Calgary set a summer record last year, spiking by as much as 9.1 per cent over 2016, says the city’s main tourism agency.
Balmy weather, the nation’s 150th birthday celebrations and Canada’s attractive political stability helped fill 3.1 million hotel rooms in Calgary last year, a six per cent increase from the previous year, said Cindy Ady, CEO of Tourism Calgary.
The year’s golden numbers were recorded from July through September, when 72,779 more rooms were filled compared to the summer of 2016, which was comparatively wet and cool.
“All the stars aligned last summer, but beyond that, we’ve had seven months of growth,” said Ady.
Part of the reason for the higher numbers is a 4.1 per cent increase in the number of hotel rooms in the city year-over-year, said Ady, many of the new ones located in the airport area.
Another ally in the city’s tourism success is the word-of-mouth promotion catapulted through social media, she said.
“Calgarians are helping us sell the city,” she said. “We’re marketing 365 days, electronically all the time.”
The leisure market — comprising ever-higher numbers of visitors who include a Calgary exploration along with a mountain trek — has seen a considerable improvement, said Ady.
“The business side has improved, but it’s still not back to pre-recession levels,” she said.
Any bonanza in the mountains from last year’s free national park pass came more from Calgarians than visitors, said Ady, though the overall spirit of Canada 150 was a boon.
That one-year freebie helped increase traffic to Banff National Park by 3.7 per cent between April 1 and Nov. 30 compared to the same time period in 2016, a gain of 110,000, to set a record of 3.1 million visits for those eight months.
For Calgary, the biggest foreign market remained the U.S., while China, the U.K. and Germany continued to figure significantly, said Ady.
Numbers for 2017 aren’t yet available, but in the previous year, seven million travellers set foot in Calgary pumping $1.6 billion into the local economy.