Holiday Inn Grande Prairie (Facebook)

By Liam Verster

Tourism Levy

Provincial support helpful for Grande Prairie hotel industry

May 22, 2020 | 1:38 PM

Update: The story has been corrected from an earlier version.

Hotel operators in Grande Prairie are glad to see some more supports for the hospitality sector, as COVID-19 restrictions have taken a toll on the industry.

On Tuesday, the provincial government announced that hotels can hang on to tourism levy fees collected between March 1 and December 31 of this year, while being able to defer levies collected prior to March until August 31.

Felix Seiler, the Chief Operating Officer for Holloway Lodging (which operates the Best Western, Quality Inn, Holiday Inn and Super 8 in Grande Prairie), says any and all revenue they can collect during this tough time for the industry helps.

“Anything we can save from a cash flow perspective, it really helps us to operate.”

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Seiler says they’ve seen a decline in occupancy of about 70 per cent since the stay-at-home measures came into effect on March 20, and the Super 8 and the Best Western have been temporarily closed.

He says this program from the government is crucial for hotel operators, as there are still plenty of fixed costs associated with the buildings.

“We have to pay property taxes, we still have to keep the lights on, we have to heat and cool the hotel, and we also have to have people on staff 24 hours a day in case something happens at the hotel for insurance reasons.”

Though the province is slowly emerging from COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, Seiler is still uncertain as to what the rest of the year will look like for the industry here in the Grande Prairie area.

“If I could give you a projection of how many people are going to stay in our hotels until next December, I’d be very happy. But we don’t really know how this is going to shake out. Are people going to travel? Our occupancies are so low right now, I mean there’s a lot of thoughts out there on what’s going to happen in the next six months, but it’s very hard to predict.”

Seiler adds that right now, with limited flights coming into Grande Prairie and the negative impacts on the province’s energy sector, those negative impacts end up reflecting back on the hotel industry.

Hotels in Grande Prairie use a third party company to deliver market share numbers, and Seiler says the data shows all hotels in the area are feeling the effects of the lockdown and restrictions, as well as the impact on the oil and gas industry.