Canada’s hospitality industry is experiencing a momentous resurgence.
With leisure trips and business travel once again booming, a new trend has emerged: “bleisure travel,” wherein leisure and business travel blend seamlessly. This nascent trend not only presents a significant opportunity for hotel chains to attract new guests, increase revenue, and differentiate themselves in a competitive market, but local developers now consider it a prime investment opportunity.
The 2020 global lockdown was challenging for hotels as an asset class, however, in the intervening years, they have persevered. Thanks to creative, savvy operators, hotels emerged from the pandemic unscathed—and even stronger, in many cases—and are taking advantage of a post-pandemic market wherein demand is markedly robust and vacancies few and far between.
“The rising trend of owning and operating ‘bleisure’ hotels is quickly gaining traction. Traditionally, the leisure hotel and corporate hotel markets served two separate purposes: the former was heavily dependent on amenity-rich weekend bookings, and the latter accommodated weekday business travel,” said Steven Chen, a top hospitality investment broker at NAI Commercial, and President of Skål Vancouver.
“But today, it’s impossible for hotels to be profitable without combining these two uses,” Chen added.
Demand in spring 2025 has surpassed 2020 “revenge travel”—defined as trips cancelled by the pandemic, but which were subsequently taken—levels, during which passengers used carried-over vacation days to visit friends and family whom they hadn’t seen in years.
“What we’re seeing now is business travellers extending their business trips into the weekend rather than checking out and going home on Friday, and that’s a completely different phenomenon,” Chen said.
According to a recent Expedia Group Media Solutions Report, 32% of business travellers plan to take a bleisure trip in the next 12 months. Another study by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) shows around 40% of business trips already include a leisure component, highlighting a drastic shift in traveller behaviour. This trend has been made possible by hybrid work configurations, which allow employees to work part of the week remotely, and have made hotels attractive investments.
And developers have taken note.
Chen recently brokered Bosa Properties’ acquisition of the 2.7-acre site at 5411 Kingsway in Burnaby, as well as the adjacent 0.17-acre land parcel at 5367 Kingsway. These purchases solidified Bosa’s reputation as Burnaby’s premier real estate investor, especially in the up-and-coming Royal Oak neighbourhood. It also points to another emergent trend in the hospitality sector.
“The hotel’s operation has very high upside potential,” Chen said. “Investing capital to improve RevPAR while awaiting the right time to redevelop is an approach I’m seeing a lot right now. Investors are finding creative ways to retain the assets long term because, in doing so, they will benefit from today’s heightened demand.”
