Vancouver hospitality statistics at a glance
Vancouver’s hospitality economy is unusually dense: tourism, air travel, cruise traffic, conventions, and hotel performance all move together, and the latest figures show that the city is still running hot.
The most useful way to read Vancouver hospitality statistics is to separate demand from capacity. Demand is visible in visitor spending, passenger counts, event attendance, and hotel performance. Capacity shows up in hotel inventory, zoning, and the pipeline of new rooms. Together, those numbers explain why the market can feel simultaneously strong and constrained.
Contents
- Fast facts
- Why Vancouver hospitality matters
- Tourism and visitor spending
- Hotels and occupancy
- Air, cruise, and convention demand
- Supply, development, and policy
- What the numbers suggest
Fast facts
Here is the shortest possible read on the market:
- Vancouver tourism revenues reached $8.9B in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights).
- Tourism supported 60,000+ jobs in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights).
- Vancouver recorded 11.2M overnight visitors in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights).
- Tourism generated $3.1B in labour income in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights).
- Downtown Vancouver hotel occupancy was 80% for Jan-Dec 2025 (Destination Vancouver hotel performance).
- Downtown Vancouver ADR was $342 for Jan-Dec 2025 (Destination Vancouver hotel performance).
- Downtown Vancouver RevPAR was $275 for Jan-Dec 2025 (Destination Vancouver hotel performance).
- Vancouver’s hotel market posted 78.2% occupancy in 2024 (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report).
- YVR handled 26.2 million passengers in 2024 (YVR 2024 passenger release).
- The Port of Vancouver handled 158,380,817 tonnes of cargo in 2024 (Port of Vancouver 2024 Statistics Overview).
The headline signal is not just that Vancouver attracts visitors. It is that the city converts visitor volume into revenue, jobs, and sustained hotel performance across multiple travel channels (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights; Avison Young Canadian hotel market report).
Why Vancouver hospitality matters
Vancouver hospitality statistics matter because the market is not a single industry. It is a linked system made up of hotels, restaurants, meetings, conventions, air service, cruise traffic, and a visitor economy that spills into labour income and tax revenue.
That matters for two reasons. First, the city’s hospitality base supports a large share of local economic activity, especially in downtown and other tourism-heavy districts. Second, capacity limits can become visible quickly when demand surges. That is why occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR are so closely watched alongside visitor counts and infrastructure data.
A strong hospitality market usually shows up in three ways:
- more visitors;
- higher rates and better hotel revenue; and
- more pressure on room supply, venues, and transport capacity.
Vancouver shows all three patterns in the data.
Tourism and visitor spending
Tourism is the broadest demand measure in the statistics set, and the 2024 figures are substantial.
Vancouver tourism revenues reached $8.9B in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights). Tourism also supported 60,000+ jobs in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights) and generated $3.1B in labour income in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights). Those three measures together show that hospitality is not only a visitor-facing sector. It is a labour-intensive economic engine.
The visitor volume behind those outcomes is also large. Vancouver recorded 11.2M overnight visitors in 2024 (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights). Overnight visitation is especially important because it tends to multiply hotel use, restaurant spend, and convention-related activity. A one-day stop and a multi-night stay do not affect the local economy in the same way.
Residents appear to understand that relationship. In the resident sentiment survey, 79% said visitors contribute to the local economy, while 18% were neutral and 3% disagreed (Destination Vancouver resident sentiment survey). That distribution suggests broad public recognition that visitor activity is economically meaningful, even if residents may still debate the pace or shape of tourism growth.
Visitor economy in one table
| Metric | 2024 value | Source label |
|---|---|---|
| Tourism revenue | $8.9B | Destination Vancouver Research & Insights |
| Overnight visitors | 11.2M | Destination Vancouver Research & Insights |
| Jobs supported | 60,000+ | Destination Vancouver Research & Insights |
| Labour income | $3.1B | Destination Vancouver Research & Insights |
The table is useful because it shows the basic structure of the market. Revenue is high, overnight visitation is high, and the employment effect is large enough to matter beyond the hospitality sector itself (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights).
Hotels and occupancy
Hotel performance is where demand becomes especially visible. Vancouver’s hotel market posted 78.2% occupancy in 2024 (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report). That is a strong result on its own, but it becomes more notable when paired with price metrics.
In 2024, Vancouver ADR was $285.21 and RevPAR was $223.09 (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report). ADR rising 7.0% year over year and RevPAR rising 6.6% year over year indicates that room demand was strong enough to support better pricing and revenue per available room (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report). Occupancy was down only 0.4% year over year, which suggests the market held up well even as rates moved higher (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report).
Downtown Vancouver shows even tighter conditions in the 2025 hotel performance figures. Downtown occupancy was 80% for Jan-Dec 2025, ADR was $342, and RevPAR was $275 (Destination Vancouver hotel performance). December 2025 alone showed 66% occupancy, $255 ADR, and $169 RevPAR (Destination Vancouver hotel performance). Those numbers imply a market that stays strong year-round but still experiences seasonal softening.
Hotel performance snapshot
| Market | Occupancy | ADR | RevPAR | Source label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver, 2024 | 78.2% | $285.21 | $223.09 | Avison Young Canadian hotel market report |
| Downtown Vancouver, Jan-Dec 2025 | 80% | $342 | $275 | Destination Vancouver hotel performance |
| Downtown Vancouver, Dec 2025 | 66% | $255 | $169 | Destination Vancouver hotel performance |
The pattern is clear. Downtown Vancouver commands a premium over the broader market, and the premium is visible in both rate and RevPAR (Destination Vancouver hotel performance; Avison Young Canadian hotel market report).
What ADR and RevPAR are telling you
ADR and RevPAR together are more informative than occupancy alone.
- ADR tells you what guests are paying on average.
- RevPAR shows how much revenue each available room is producing.
- Occupancy shows how full the market is, but not how much pricing power it has.
When occupancy remains high and ADR rises, the market is usually benefiting from both demand strength and pricing discipline. That is what Vancouver’s 2024 and 2025 hotel figures suggest (Destination Vancouver hotel performance; Avison Young Canadian hotel market report).
Air, cruise, and convention demand
Vancouver hospitality demand does not come from hotels alone. It is reinforced by air travel, cruise traffic, and conventions, each of which brings a different kind of visitor.
YVR handled 26.2 million passengers in 2024, up 5% from 2023 (YVR 2024 passenger release). The airport also moved 339,000 tonnes of cargo in 2024, up 7% year over year (YVR 2024 passenger release). Passenger traffic growth matters for hospitality because it feeds both leisure and business demand, while cargo activity reinforces the wider travel and logistics ecosystem.
YVR’s 2024 traffic mix also shows breadth. Domestic traveller volume rose 0.3%, transborder passenger volume rose 9.7%, and international passenger volume rose 10.4% (YVR 2024 passenger release). The airport served 51 airlines and 120 destinations in 2024 (YVR 2024 passenger release). That network scale helps explain why Vancouver can sustain a large hospitality market even outside peak summer travel.
The port and convention segments add more layers. The Port of Vancouver handled 1,327,309 cruise passengers in 2024 and cruise traffic rose 7% year over year (Port of Vancouver 2024 Statistics Overview). The Vancouver Convention Centre welcomes upwards of 1,000,000 people each year and hosts upwards of 550 events each year (Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits). Non-resident delegates spend over $1,400 on average as a result of attending an event there, and delegates spend an average of 4.2 nights in BC because of those events (Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits).
Convention and event effects
The convention economy matters because it creates concentrated, high-value demand.
- More than 65% of non-resident delegates plan to return to BC within two years (Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits).
- More than 75% of exhibitors plan to return within two years (Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits).
- Events supported in 2024 generated $544M in total economic output (Destination Vancouver events impact release).
- Those events generated $338M in direct spending and $283M in GDP (Destination Vancouver events impact release).
- They also created 4,010 full-time equivalent jobs and $87M in tax revenue across all levels of government (Destination Vancouver events impact release).
That is a significant reminder that hospitality in Vancouver is not limited to weekend tourism. Meetings and events can produce large, measurable economic effects on their own (Destination Vancouver events impact release; Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits).
Supply, development, and policy
The supply side is where Vancouver’s hospitality story becomes more constrained.
The city’s hotel policy targets 10,000 more hotel rooms by 2050 (City of Vancouver hotel development page). The policy also allows hotels in RM-5C, RM-6, C-2, C-3A, C-5, C-5A, C-6, FC-1, FC-2, HA-1, HA-1A, HA-2, and HA-3 zoning (City of Vancouver hotel development page). In practical terms, that means the city has defined multiple zoning pathways for hotel development, but policy permission does not automatically translate into fast construction.
The development pipeline is still relatively modest compared with demand. Vancouver has 22 hotel projects in the development pipeline, representing approximately 4,200 rooms (Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release). That sounds meaningful, but the same source says Vancouver hotels are already operating at 80% average annual occupancy and can reach up to 95% occupancy during peak seasons (Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release). In other words, new rooms matter because the market is already busy.
The long-term supply story is even tighter. Between 2002 and 2022, Vancouver saw a net loss of hotel rooms, the pandemic removed 550 rooms from inventory, only 12 new hotels were built in the last 20 years, and Vancouver had the same number of hotel rooms in 2025 as it did in 2002 (Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release).
Supply and demand in one table
| Supply-side indicator | Value | Source label |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel projects in pipeline | 22 | Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release |
| Rooms in pipeline | 4,200 | Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release |
| Target additional rooms by 2050 | 10,000 | City of Vancouver hotel development page |
| Net room loss, 2002-2022 | Net loss | Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release |
| New hotels in last 20 years | 12 | Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release |
| Rooms removed by pandemic | 550 | Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release |
The table shows the central tension in Vancouver hospitality statistics: strong demand meets slow supply growth (Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release; City of Vancouver hotel development page).
What the numbers suggest
Vancouver hospitality statistics point to a market with three defining features.
First, demand is broad-based. Tourism revenues, overnight visitors, airport passengers, cruise passengers, and convention attendance all point in the same direction: the city attracts large numbers of people and converts that traffic into economic activity (Destination Vancouver Research & Insights; YVR 2024 passenger release; Port of Vancouver 2024 Statistics Overview; Vancouver Convention Centre economic benefits).
Second, the hotel market is healthy but not loose. Occupancy is strong, rates are high, and RevPAR is rising in a way that suggests sustained pricing power (Avison Young Canadian hotel market report; Destination Vancouver hotel performance).
Third, supply remains constrained relative to demand. The pipeline exists, but the broader history of room counts, the pandemic losses, and the fact that 2025 room inventory still matches 2002 all point to a market that has not kept pace with visitor growth (Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release).
If you are reading the numbers as an operator, investor, planner, or marketer, the key takeaway is simple: Vancouver hospitality is not just growing, it is operating under persistent capacity pressure. That pressure is exactly what keeps occupancy high, pricing firm, and policy attention focused on room growth, event demand, and transit access (City of Vancouver hotel development page; Destination Vancouver hotel performance; Destination Vancouver and BC Hotel Association release).