Toronto portfolio will be booked solid:The Bollywood Academy Awards comes to the Rogers Centre as Toronto will benefit from the massive influx of film and media types coming to Toronto for a week-long festival topped-off by the International Indian Academy Awards Presentation Show and Film Festival. This is the first time that Toronto will host this event.
This will be followed by the Pride week-long Festival of events topped-off by the massive Pride Parade.
Innvest will certainly benefit from the huge influx of visitors coming to take in the different events. Aside from these two major events, numerous other very large festivals and presentations are scheduled in the weeks ahead for Toronto.
With the recent drop in the price of oil and other related fossil fuels, tourism by casual travellers from the U.S.A. will certainly contribute to the hotel industry here as many people will decide to drive up and visit Canada to take advantage of this interim drop in the cost of gasoline as the U.S. releases massive reserves from their stockpile, in order to stimulate the economy a bit. The high CDN$ may hurt somewhat but hotels will probably offer some deals to U.S. travellers to compensate for the foreign exchange difference.
As I mentioned in a previous posting, 2 Sutton Place Hotels are for sale. Sutton Place is a 5STAR operation and now that Innvest operates under slightly different REIT rules as a stapled-reit, it can purchase international hotel assets without going "offside". The Toronto and Chicago Sutton Place Hotels are 2 fine opportunities that Innvest should look at. I don't know why they didn't consider the other 2 in Western Canada. I believe one was in Vancouver where Innvest has no exposure at all.