The good, the bad and the ugly of Kelowna's tourism numbers

Hotel occupancy and rates are up, tourist spending is off slightly and short-term rentals are in freefall.

That sums up Kelowna's summer of tourism, according to data collected and numbers crunched by Tourism Kelowna from various sources.

Tourism Kelowna released the findings this week "to identify trends and patterns in the local market."

The statistics compare quarter 3 (July, August and September) 2024 to the same three months in 2023.

Remember, in August 2023, tourism ground almost to a halt as wildfires forced evacuations and pleas for people not to travel to the region.

Tough new rules on short-term rentals, fear of more wildfires and smoke and battered consumer confidence led to a summer in 2024 that is definitely a mixed bag.

At the time, media reported of a "soft" and "so-so" summer in which tourists still came to Kelowna, but didn't stay as long and didn't spend as much.

Let's start with the short-term rental breakdown because it is the most dramatic.

British Columbia changed the rules this year to allow short-term rentals (which most people think of as Airbnb and Vrbo) only in the primary residence of the homeowner.

That drastically cut down on the short-term rental inventory that investors owned specifically to Airbnb.

The strict regulations caused a 32.5% reduction in short-term rental units from 4,079 in the summer of 2023 to 2,752 in the summer of 2024.

Correspondingly, the number of short-term rental reservations in the city plummeted to 34,985 in summer 2024 from 48,103 in summer 2023.

The bright spot in the short-term rental realm is that the average daily rate in summer 2024 was $399.67, a 7.3% bump from $372 in summer 2023.

When it comes to hotel, motel and resort occupancy in summer 2024, it was 78.4% in 2024 compared to 73% in 2023.

The average daily rate was also up a bit to $245.67 in 2024 from $239 in 2023.

Total visitor spending in summer 2024 was $395 million, a slip of 1.7% from summer 2023's $401.8 million.

Comings and goings at Kelowna International Airport are trending well with over 1.57 million passengers for the first nine months of this year.

September also set a new record with 167,433 passengers, breaking the previous September high of 161,433.

The airport is well on its way to more than 2 million passengers in 2024, which could set a new record.

Tourism Kelowna's industry indicators update also provided an outlook for the quarter we're currently in.

October was considered strong, but no numbers were provided.

November and December are expected to have no or minimal growth compared to last year.