Article content

It’s a perennial pattern in the National Capital Region. Tourists scramble to find hotel rooms on Canada Day and are willing in most cases to pay full price. The following weekend? Not so much.

During last year’s Canada Day weekend, for instance, tourists secured 14,585 rooms across Ottawa. The next weekend, just 11,801 rooms were occupied, a decline of nearly 20 per cent according to a compilation by Ottawa Tourism.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or For Ottawa hotel operators, it's the Canada Day hangover Back to video

Of course, that was the Canada 150 celebration, which pulled in an unusually high number of tourists. The year before, 13,448 rooms were booked on Canada Day weekend. That tally slipped about eight per cent to 12,407 the following weekend.

Data isn’t yet available for 2018, but the pattern is expected to be similar. Hotels contacted by this newspaper reported full occupancy over the Canada Day weekend despite the negative publicity associated with the 2017 celebrations, marred by heavy rains and extraordinary lineups to gain entrance to Parliament Hill.