Vancouver city councillor calls for action amid dire hotel room shortage

Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung is calling for Vancouver to improve its hotel stock, in order to alleviate pressure on local housing and lessen the cost of visiting the city.

She said while Vancouver is an amazing destination for international events such as Ed Sheeran’s recent record-setting visit and the upcoming FIFA World Cup, these events won’t be possible in the future if hotel room numbers don’t increase.

“We’re going to host FIFA, the largest sporting event in the world in two years for the world cup. But we will no longer be able to accommodate or bid on events like that because we simply will not have places for people to stay,” Kirby-Yung said.

She says a dire shortage of hotel rooms in the city is putting more pressure on Airbnbs and local housing, but more hotel rooms could help alleviate this stress.

“We’ll make our visitor economy more competitive, grow the tourism sector and also reduce the pressure on local housing,” she said. “We’ve seen a lot of conversation, obviously, about the impact on Airbnb and a lot of that pressure can be linked, obviously, to a shortage of hotel rooms in the city.”

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While cities of comparable profiles have been building hotels at a steady pace, Kirby-Yung says Vancouver has lost 1,500 rooms since 2010, with another 550 lost during the pandemic.

To create these spaces, Kirby-Yung says more flexible policies that allow for hotels to be built outside of the downtown core, and in mixed-use buildings will help. She says there’s also some opportunity to transform some of the cities’ offices into hotel accommodations, since less people are working in-person after the COVID-19 pandemic.

While hotel development policy has concentrated hotels in the downtown area in the past. Kirby-Yung says she sees lots of room for growth in the Granville entertainment district, along the Broadway corridor and near the new St. Paul’s Hospital site, close to Great Northern Way.

“Vancouver already is an amazing destination for international events,” she said. “That’s why it’s really important that we start getting hotels built now.”

Kirby-Yung says the current shortage is making hotel prices unaffordable for some visitors, and adding more rooms could make the city more accessible. She adds Vancouver is projected to lose billions of dollars in tourism revenue in the coming years due to its lack of visitor accommodations.

“Tourism is really an unsung hero and competes with resource industries in our province in terms of billion of dollars in spending and tens of thousands of jobs,” she said. “It’s a really important part of our economy.”

She plans to table the motion at council next week.

-With files from Shrusti Gangdev