Western Canada's Hotel Hotbed
Western Canada accounted for 60% of the total transaction volume nationwide in the first half of the year. B.C. was particularly dominant, notes Colliers International hotels manager Russell Beaudry (pictured below with group VP Robin McLuskie), leading the country with $170M in sales—30% of the national volume. The average price for hotels sold in the west was $11.4M, Russell points out, versus $6.8M in Eastern Canada. The difference here can be explained by the larger transactions in Western Canada in the first six months of the year, Russell says; deals in the east involved smaller, limited-service assets in secondary and tertiary markets.
The sale of the 477-room Fairmont Empress Hotel in Victoria (pictured above) to Bosa Developments was among the the top transactions in the first half of the year (though no price was disclosed), as was Argus Properties’ $19.7M purchase of the Hotel Eldorado, a boutique resort in Kelowna. Nationwide, there was considerably less hotel transaction volume in first-half 2014 compared with last year ($570M vs $840M). But Russell indicates there's a broad appetite for hotels among a variety of investors, and he predicts overall total volume for the year could ultimately hit $1.5B.
