Warm winter and tightened purse strings slow business at Montreal hotels

Montreal hotels have had a difficult start to 2024, with bookings down compared to the beginning of last year.

Experts say the warm weather is to blame.

"If they are coming for winter activities like skiing or snowmobiling, they are usually coming one or two days in Montreal," said Eric Hamel of the Greater Montreal Hotel Association. "Right now, that's a market [where] we see that they are not coming in to Montreal."

Nevertheless, the association hopes for a rebound this spring and summer and forecasts similar numbers to last year, when hotel bookings finally returned to pre-pandemic levels.

But the loss of the Just for Laughs festival will have an impact on tourism -- and the worry is that the economic conditions that lead to its downfall could also affect the more than 100 other festivals the city puts on every summer.

Hamel says the biggest downturn this winter has been weekend travellers.

"The fact that people have less and less money in their pocket, probably the priority is not to spend time in a hotel," said Hamel.

"Right now, we can see that our weekends that used to be busy are not so busy right now."