THE HOTEL FACTOR

As tourism returns, new hotels are opening - and many have their sights set on locals

- Nickie Shobeiry

For the past eight years, Steve Ball has been the president of the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association (OGHA). Before that, he was on the board of Ottawa Tourism for over a decade - and if we go back to 1998, Ball was busy founding Ottawa Magazine.

When he left the publishing business in 2005, it was a no-brainer that he'd end up in tourism. "I was very connected to the hotel community," Ball says.

For Ball, hotels are a part of the fabric of major communities and for a government city like Ottawa, they become critical infrastructure. "You've got iconic properties like the Château Laurier that hosts a ton of corporate travel, [and] people coming here to do business with the government," he says, such as President Biden visiting town this spring.

Back in 2019, Ball says, 11 million tourists were flocking to Ottawa every year roughly 10 times the population resulting in $2.2 billion being spent on restaurants, shopping, attractions and more.

Numbers like that are a boon to Ottawans. "The economic value helps reduce the cost burden of residents that live in Ottawa," Ball says. "Without this large influx of the visitor economy, our tax base would be higher."

During the pandemic, tourism tanked. Already-large gaps in social safety nets became wider, and issues surrounding homelessness were exacerbated. "Working together with the City and as a community, hotels can play a role in rebalancing what downtown cores need to look like," Ball says.