It has been a summer of highs and lows for Oxford Properties' small, but high-quality Canadian hotel and resorts portfolio.

Oxford's Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in Alberta has just reopened after portions of the resort were damaged by a wildfire which tore through the region in July. On a happier note, however, Oxford was able to celebrate recently with news that four of its seven properties have been awarded Michelin Keys.

Oxford Properties got into hotel ownership in 2006 with its acquisition of a Fairmont resort portfolio and has since shed a few non-core properties, while adding others that better align with its geographic and brand strategies.

“It's in a pretty stable position now,” Oxford hotels vice-president Steve Sandercott told RENX of the portfolio, which is comprised of five resorts and two urban hotels. “There are over 35 restaurant outlets, three golf courses and seven spas. We have about 1,400 apartments with 3,000-plus beds because of the remote locations of so many of our hotels.”

Oxford's hotel portfolio

The Michelin Keys recognize what the Michelin Guide team considers to be the top 33 hotels in the country.

The 519-room Fairmont Chateau Whistler, located 120 kilometres north of Vancouver, received a two-Michelin Key rating.

Two of Oxford’s other resorts received one Michelin Key:

• the 757-room Fairmont Banff Springs, located in Alberta’s Banff National Park about 125 kilometres west of Calgary;
• and the 487-room Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, located in the Rocky Mountains a two-hour drive west of Calgary.

Oxford’s 336-room Park Hyatt Toronto in the city’s Yorkville neighbourhood also received one Michelin Key. The Park Hyatt was acquired in 2015 and underwent four years of redevelopment to bring it up to its current standard.

The company’s other hotel in the city, the 584-room InterContinental Toronto Centre, is farther downtown at 225 Front St. W.

The Michelin Guide, which is better known for its coveted restaurant ratings, uses five criteria when selecting hotels: excellence in architecture and interior design; quality and consistency of service; overall personality and character; value for the price; and being a significant contributor to the local area.

Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge has reopened

The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, which has 442 guest rooms and cabins on 700 acres in the Rocky Mountains about 360 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, just reopened after experiencing damage from the devastating wildfires which ripped through the region this summer.

The property lost about a dozen buildings, about half of which was housing for resort staff, as about 95 per cent of the employees live on site. That meant about 100 staff members were left without beds.

Two guest cabins, a golf maintenance compound and a facility maintenance compound were also lost. The golf course and some of its structures also sustained damage.

“The core main building and the vast majority of our guest cabins remain intact,” said Sandercott, who noted the resort was relatively lucky considering about 900 housing units comprising approximately 30 per cent of total inventory in the municipality were destroyed.

Reducing wildfire risk

There’s a risk of wildfires every summer in these heavily forested mountain communities and a risk assessment and mitigation measure report for The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge was commissioned eight years ago by Oxford, the Municipality of Jasper and Parks Canada. 

Oxford spent about $1 million on implementing measures to reduce the risk of wildfire damage, including introducing fire breaks in strategic locations, landscape modifications and adding sprinkler systems throughout the property to wet the buildings in the event of just such a fire.

“For the first time ever, we had to put our wildfire emergency evacuation plan into place, and we evacuated over 1,200 people from the property,” Sandercott said of this summer’s fires.

About 350 staff members were back on site for the Oct. 1 reopening, which Sandercott said would be ramped up gradually in anticipation of being well-positioned for next summer. The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge’s lost structures will be rebuilt over the next two years.

“With the 65 family units that we lost on property, in addition to the 10 to 20 employees who lost homes in the community, we have been housing them at the hotel,” Sandercott said. 

“In the hotel we're working to build a temporary housing complex to bridge until we can rebuild the employee housing that we had on site. But optimistically, we're thinking that temporary housing won't be in play until Q1 of next year.”

Oxford’s properties in Banff, Lake Louise and Whistler are smaller and risk prevention in those locations is more closely tied to the local communities’ fire management strategies.

Renovations for Jasper and Rimrock Resort Hotel

In addition to the fire damage repairs, all of the guest rooms and food and beverage outlets at The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge will be undergoing renovations over the next two years.

Oxford and an institutional capital partner acquired The Rimrock Resort Hotel — which has more than 330 rooms, 18,000 square feet of event space, a 9,000-square-foot spa, an indoor pool, four restaurants and bars, a fitness centre, and a seasonal ice-skating rink — in Banff last year. 

The acquisition also continues the owner-and-operator relationship between Oxford and French multinational hospitality company Accor, which extends to the four Western Canada Fairmont resorts.

The Rimrock has remained open while going through extensive renovations to enhance its luxury experience and improve its environmental sustainability. The redevelopment is expected to take two to three years.

“We viewed it as an asset that had been relatively under-capitalized and was ready to be reborn, so that's what we're planning to do with it,” Sandercott said. 

Post-pandemic recovery for hotels

Resorts recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic more quickly than urban hotels. Sandercott has been pleasantly surprised by how resilient the customer base has been and with the amount of discretionary spending allotted to experiences and wellness.

“Where we choose to invest in the hospitality space is pretty heavy on resorts and highly experiential resorts, and the post-pandemic recovery has been really validating and rewarding because of how much growth we've seen in that sub-sector of hospitality,” he said.

Oxford is bullish about the future of the hospitality sector and believes it has strong tailwinds behind it.

“While we want to grow, we're going to be very careful to make sure the type of assets that we bring into the fold are suitable and appropriate for that core strategy of owning the best and continuing to add value to it,” said Sandercott.