Vancouver can no longer support the volume. Occupancy is holding in the 90 per cent range, average daily rates are high, and city studies project a shortfall of 10,000 hotel rooms in the coming years.
Despite this, there are few hotel projects moving forward under current financing and policy conditions.
This means Vancouver is not positioned to fully capitalize on the tourism rebound. The city risks losing visitor spending, international event capacity and future economic opportunities simply because there are not enough rooms.
Deecorp Properties Ltd., a commercial real estate company based in Vancouver, has three hotel projects it is hoping to build in the city comprising more than 1,000 rooms located at the corners of Granville and Davie, Granville and Pender, and 8th and Yukon. They are three of the most strategically located hotel development sites in in Vancouver’s core transit and cultural corridors.
“(The) hotel (sector) is grossly underserved. We think we’re doing the city a great favour, and it’s economically viable,” said Stanley Dee, founder of Deecorp,
He said the project at Davie and Granville is “right at the beachhead of the Granville Entertainment District, which the City of Vancouver has focused on these last couple of years.”
“The new plan for Granville Street is quite exciting, and they’d like to see projects like this, this being a very important corner in that entertainment district— in fact, the most important corner, I’d say,” explained Dee.
“The project is due for public hearing January 15. And we’d be very surprised if it’s not passed. There’s a lot of support.
“It’s about 460 rooms: roughly 180 regular full-service upscale hotel rooms. Above that will be 280 larger long-stay rooms— limited service and longer stay. The average person there might stay a week or two or three or four, versus one to three days in the regular full-service hotel.”
Dee said the proposed project at Granville and Pender is at one of the busiest intersections in that part of downtown.
“It also happens to be exactly where the CanadaLine, the most important transit line coming through Vancouver, exits at the terminus. You get out of the CanadaLine and one of the exits is right in front of the building,” he said.
“So it’s very transit-friendly, right in the heart of transit. It’s also very close to the cruise ship terminals, the convention centres, Gastown— all that. It’s at the confluence of all these high-energy things, and at the end of Pacific Centre Mall. From all the hoteliers we spoke to, it’s kind of the 10-out-of-10 hotel location in the city.”
This project would be just over 400 rooms.
“Actually, with that one we’re considering putting a very large residential component, and that’s yet to be determined. We just submitted the application (recently).”
Dee said the 8th and Yukon project is a block from the next most important intersection outside of downtown, Broadway and Cambie. It’s also a block from the SkyTrain station.
“What’s also really good here is the slope from Broadway down to the water. There’s a gentle slope, amazing views, and no tall buildings in front of us, one or two six- or seven-storey buildings,” he said, adding this project would probably have more rooms than the other two.
“But we’re earlier in planning. We see demand for space, meeting space, convention space. We’re not competing with the convention centre, but right now all the good meeting space is downtown. There’s nothing else in Vancouver. There’s a Holiday Inn three or four blocks up, built about 60 years ago, with a couple of tiny rooms. No meaningful meeting space.
“We’ll probably have a lot of meeting space and a lot of long-stay hotel rooms. Long-stay works because we have two great grocery stores,Whole Foods and Save-On-Foods, within a block. Someone coming for one to three weeks probably doesn’t want to eat out all the time. They want prepared food, heat-up food, some basic cooking. Those are long-stay hotels.”
Deecorp was founded by Dee in 1994. Over the past 31 years it has acquired, developed, financed, and managed a portfolio of real estate assets with a combined value of over $600 million.
Earlier this year, a new report released by Destination Vancouver and the BC Hotel Association, Hotel Community Impact Assessment suggest that Vancouver urgently needs 10,000 hotel rooms by 2050 to keep pace with growing demand.
Business, sporting and cultural events supported by Destination Vancouver delivered significant economic and social value to the city in 2024, according to a new independent report from MNP that highlights the scale and impact of Vancouver’s event sector. These events represented $338 million in direct spending alone, said the organization.
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