At a time when they’d normally be gearing up for the busy summer season, many Alberta hotels are instead struggling to survive, and some of them may end up going out of business because of the COVID-19 crisis.
Hotel Arts in downtown Calgary is one hotel dealing with the pandemic, having shut down on April 11. “We can’t stay open and running with around two per cent occupancy,” said Fraser Abbott, Hotel Arts’ director of business development. “There definitely was not enough traffic.” The British Columbia Hotel Association estimates that 40 per cent of the hotels in that province may not survive the pandemic, and the numbers may be even more bleak in Alberta. [ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ] “It is