Hotel pipeline · Montreal
Montreal was the only major Canadian hotel market to decline in 2025 — occupancy fell 4.5 points to 66.6% and RevPAR slipped 2.8% to CAD 155.87, largely because supply grew 4% into a trade-war spring. The answer from the development side was a boutique wave: AC Hotel Old Montreal, the Railwayparc Tapestry by Hilton and the 36-room SonoLux, named among Esquire’s best new hotels in the world for 2026.
Canada posted its highest annual hotel performance on record in 2025 (CoStar: 66.1% occupancy, CAD 216.10 ADR, CAD 142.89 RevPAR) — and Montreal ran against the current. The city was the only major market to record declines: occupancy down 4.5 points to 66.6% and RevPAR down 2.8% to CAD 155.87, even as ADR held positive. The cause is unusually legible: hotel capacity grew about 4% in 2025, and the new rooms arrived exactly into the spring shock — US visits down 12% in July amid the trade-war downturn — before a second-half recovery closed the year.
Tourisme Montréal’s own ledger tells the recovery half of the story: more than 90 days printed occupancy above 80%, up 7% on the year, and the final quarter erased the slow start. The market’s problem was never demand structure — it was timing and supply. That distinguishes Montreal from Vancouver’s chronic shortage: this is a brief absorption pause, not a famine.
What opened in 2025 was deliberately small. AC Hotel Old Montreal brought Marriott’s European-styled brand to 124 rooms beside Notre-Dame Basilica in May; the Hôtel Railwayparc joined Hilton’s Tapestry Collection in the NDG rail corridor in June with 73 rooms; and in November SonoLux opened 36 rooms of acoustics-driven design in a 1914 Old Montreal building — earning a place on Esquire’s Best New Hotels in the World 2026 list. The Sofitel on Sherbrooke refreshed its 169 rooms for the 2026 season.
The TIO framing: Montreal’s hotel cycle is repricing on character, not scale. With ADR still rising through the occupancy dip, the owners’ playbook is conversion and boutique positioning ahead of the 2026 event wave — the UCI Road World Championships in September, the largest international sporting event in the city since the 1976 Olympics, plus an F1 Grand Prix moved to May. The 2026 summer already ran 82% occupancy May–July with bookings up 12%; the absorption question is likely answered by September.
The TIO Read: buy the pause, not the panic. Montreal’s 2025 hotel decline is the most explainable number in the series — 4% more rooms met a trade-war spring, and the market still grew rate. The boutique openings that arrived mid-dip (SonoLux is the one to watch) are bets on the 2026 calendar, not the 2025 print. When the UCI Worlds put 10 days of global television on the city in September, the 4% of new supply becomes the cheapest rooms in the country’s event market. Watch occupancy against the 66.6% floor: first print above 70% in 2026 confirms the pause is over.
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