Travel posted Dec 7, 2024 @ 12:00pm by Steve MacNaull

Kelowna woman is new chair of the BC Hotel Association

The BC hotel industry is in pretty good shape.

"I'd say we've fully recovered from COVID and the wildfires of the summer of 2023," said Tanya Stroinig, the new chair of the board of the 588-member BC Hotel Association

"But, we're still behind with international travellers from Europe and Asia. That's why we work in tandem with Destination BC and the Tourism Association of BC" (to promote BC to the world to increase tourist visits and fill hotel rooms).

It's not just tourists who stay in hotels, but business travellers, convention delegates, visiting friends and relatives, people travelling for health care and people displaced by damage to their home or wildfire evacuation.

After four years on the board, two as vice-chair, Stroinig was elected chair at the recent Vancouver meeting of the new 2025 board of directors.

The chair job is a part-time, volunteer one, so Stroinig has a regular, full-time job in the industry as chief operating officer at Prestige Hotels & Resorts, the Kelowna-based chain of 19 hotels in 14 cities across BC.

Stroinig has been with Prestige for 26 years and worked her way up in the company through sales and catering, purchasing, administration, project management and managing hotels to chief operating officer overseeing the team of hotel general managers and the team at the corporate office in Kelowna.

Her dual focus is guest services and revenue management.

Kelowna is well represented on the 17-person board with two others from the city as directors -- Cedric Younge from Hyatt Place Kelowna and Edan Fay from The Royal Kelowna.

Stroinig said the BC Hotel Association is more of a behind-the-scenes organization advocating and supporting its members, which represent 80,000 rooms throughout the province and 58,000 employees.

For instance, the association advocated for BC's new short-term rental rules, which allow the likes of Airbnb and Vrbo units only in the principal residences of homeowners.

That means now more short-term rentals in investment properties that people purchased specifically to Airbnb all the time.

The BC government and BC Hotel Association wanted the change to free up units for long-term rentals to help ease the province's housing crisis.

Stroinig doesn't see short-term rentals and hotels as direct competition, but rather as "coinciding segments" of the accommodation market.

The association also advocates for living wages, careers in tourism and staff accommodation as ways to strengthen the hotel industry and help address the labour shortage that faces not just tourism, but most sectors of the economy.

</who>The 2025 board of directors of the BC Hotel Association.