Oxford Qualities purchases Rimrock Vacation resort Resort in Banff

Oxford Qualities purchases Rimrock Vacation resort Resort in Banff
Open up this photograph in gallery:

The Rimrock Resort Lodge in the Rocky Mountains in Banff, Alta., on June 14.TODD KOROL/The Globe and Mail

Oxford Properties Team Inc. has bought the Rimrock Resort Lodge in Banff, Alta., introducing to its current portfolio of massive luxury accommodations in the Canadian Rockies and reinforcing its bet on a rebound in need for higher-conclude lodging.

The 330-place resort, which opened in 1993 on Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park, has a record likely again to 1895. Oxford is planning a prime-to-bottom renovation to refresh the property, which has 18,000 square ft of celebration space and a 9,000-sq.-foot spa.

Oxford has struck an settlement with French hospitality giant Accor S.A., ACRFF which manages the Fairmont and Sofitel makes as component of a portfolio of 5,400 attributes, to handle and work the Rimrock.

Neither the terms of the order nor the seller had been disclosed in an announcement on Wednesday. But Oxford is paying $170-million to get the resort from an unnamed Japanese hospitality group and will place up to $100-million into renovations in the coming a long time, in accordance to a supply familiar with the transaction, whom The World and Mail is not figuring out due to the fact they have been not licensed to examine the information of the deal.

Oxford is the serious estate investment arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Program (OMERS), the $124-billion pension program supervisor. Other properties in Oxford’s portfolio, which experienced about 3,000 lodge rooms just before the Rimrock offer, incorporate the Fairmont Banff Springs, Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and Fairmont Château Lake Louise – which are all in Alberta – as effectively as the Fairmont Château Whistler in B.C., giving it a dominant place in luxurious accommodations in the space.

Pension fund OMERS names new head of Oxford Attributes

OMERS experiences $4.9-billion acquire as non-public belongings offset public-sector losses

Accor is a acquainted lover, by now managing the Fairmont attributes Oxford owns, as well as recognizable Fairmont motels in Quebec City, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria.

Oxford has invested much more than $500-million into a portfolio of mountain resort lodges considering that 2006, but the Rimrock is the 1st hotel the enterprise has bought since 2014, signalling its returning self confidence in the sector. Final year, Oxford marketed extra authentic estate attributes than it obtained, generating US$5.8-billion of inclinations which includes multiple office towers, but it has held on to marquee motels it owns.

Following a sharp fall in occupancy throughout the hotel sector as COVID-19 prompted vacation limits and general public-overall health problems, Canadian hotels have bounced back again, with initially-quarter profits for each obtainable place up 19 per cent from the similar period of time in 2019, prior to the world pandemic, in accordance to a report from Colliers.

That has designed motels one particular of the superior accomplishing parts of a broader actual estate sector exactly where property values are under increasing stress, most notably in business office properties that are seeing slipping occupancy fees and retail properties these as malls that are finding much less foot targeted traffic as workers’ and consumers’ routines are switching.

Oxford Qualities to offer Toronto’s Royal Lender Plaza to Zara founder for more than $1.2-billion

Banff National Park receives a lot more than 4 million people every single calendar year, and there is a confined inventory of hotel qualities due to the fact new enhancement is capped to safeguard the park’s organic ecosystem.

“We are extremely fired up to obtain this exceptionally unique resort in the vibrant, large-barrier-to-entry Banff industry,” Tyler MacDonald, Oxford’s head of resorts and possibilities, said in a well prepared statement. “Our acquisition of The Rimrock speaks to our extended-phrase conviction in Canada’s luxury vacation resort resort market, exactly where we have significant scale.”

A multiyear renovation is anticipated to start off up coming year, and the Rimrock will remain open when the function is finished.