By Andrew Macdonald
This week not a single hotel room could be had in downtown Halifax even though the stock runs to just over 3,000 rooms.
That’s the word from Newcastle Hotel exec Guido Kerpel, whose company owns the grand Nova Scotian Westin near the Halifax waterfront.
The 100 per cent occupancy in the downtown comes as two hotels in Dartmouth are closed, Kerpel tells The Macdonald Notebook.
That includes the Ramada in Burnside, owned by the Armour Group, headed up by Scott McCrea, and the Holiday Inn in downtown Dartmouth, owned by the Toor family of Toronto.
Those two hotels, which contain 500 rooms, are closed and undergoing renovations.
The full-up occupancy is a sign that tourists are flocking to Halifax and that summer is now here.
Prior to this week, there have been “spotty days” of also full occupancy, says Kerpel.
“What you have to keep in mind, as well, we are getting a lot of overflow out of Dartmouth, because the old Holiday Inn and Ramada are closed for renovations”, says the well known hotelier.
“They’ve been closed for the last two months and will probably be closed for another month or two,” he adds.
“While the Canada 150 celebrations are going on, the Jazz Fest is on, and other events are taking place, not having the 500 (Dartmouth) rooms puts pressure on the downtown.
“We’re pretty much full, as are most hotels. We have a couple of softer days, where occupancy is around 93 per cent.”
The full occupancy takes place before the Tall Ship extravaganza at the end of the month. The last Tall Ship festival in 2009, brought 600,000 people to Port of Halifax.
“The Jazz Festival, Buskers, Tall Ships, there is so much going on, it is pretty phenomenal,” says Kerpel.
The rental rate for a Nova Scotian Westin room this week is priced at $200, “but we have other units which were pre-booked before the pressure and those units were booked at the $150 range a night,” he says.
