As we begin 2013 the "year end" stats will start rolling in for 2012, as such I will try to update my graphs, as well as add new ones.

Today I updated the "hotel rooms sold" graph and created a building permit graph...I'll post those here as well as update the first page.


Hotel Nights Sold (in thousands)
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...s/graph1-1.jpg
Source: NB Tourism Dept. (Tourism Indicators Summary Report), NB Tourism Dept. (2012 Tourism Indicators)

In 2012 Moncton had an average hotel occupancy of 59% (up from 58%), Freddy held the line at 57% and Saint John fell to 50% from 52% last year.

Construction

CMA Building Permit Values (in Millions of $) I added PEI as a point of reference as they have similar numbers.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...ts/graph-2.jpg
Source: Statscan

Interesting that the Moncton hotel sales were flat between 2011-12, but that new hotel by the airport was still built regardless. We really need to slow down hotel construction for a few years for the market to recover.

And that building permit line for Saint John is bruuuutal. It would only take one or two of those proposed projects like the fertilizer plant and new terminal at the port for that to turn around though.

Fredericton neeeeeeeeds to stop building hotels for, I don't know, 15-20 years, haha. The market has been flooded. I'm pretty sure I stated this on the Fredericton thread as well.

The national average for occupancy rates for 2012 was 62% so Moncton isn't far off at 60%. A small hotel like the new Marriott would most likely not effect the rate in Moncton even if it sat empty all year, I'd say the market can safely absorb a hotel of that size every couple years. In the last 6 years Moncton has increased room rentals by 100,000 while the rest of NB remained flat.

But Moncton also has a lot more to offer families on vaction, which I'm sure helps a lot. Magic Mountain, Crystal Palace, Casino New Brunswick (kinda), Parlee Beach, Magnetic Hill, The largest mall in New Brunswick, etc.

Freddy still stands at 57% average occupancy last year which is OK, no need to shut down hotels by any means, but opening new ones would not seem wise at this time, based on no growth over the last few years. Spreading the same number of visitors ever thinner is not the solution. Same applies for Saint John although 50% occupancy is a more concerning number.

At least the number of hotel rooms sold in Moncton is still increasing (slowly), 539,500 in 2012 vs 538,600 in 2011. Both SJ and Freddy show gradually decreasing hotel sales.

Nonetheless, we obviously should be cautious about further expansion in capacity. I would still like to see a new hotel downtown as part of the events centre complex. The events centre likely would be able to generate new business for any new attached hotel in the complex. We probably have enough suburban hotels though, with sizeable clusters already established at Magnetic Hill, on Mapleton Road In the power centre district and in east Dieppe near the international airport.

Jhikka posted this on the Halifax Population and Demographics Thread. I thought it perhaps deserved a broader audience here.... :)

February NB Unemployment Stats

- Province: 10.1%

- Southeast region: 8.0%
- Capital region: 9.5%
- Southwest region: 10.6%
- Northwest region: 12.1%
- Northeast region: 18.9%

- Moncton CMA: 6.3%
- Saint John CMA: 9.6%

Just to add some numbers to your post..

NB added 4,800 full-time jobs whilst shedding 1,900 part-time jobs. StatsCan also stated that 2,000 people left the workforce in February. Presumably most of these would be retirements.

Those are very good numbers, actually. Full time jobs pay better, and pay more taxes than part time jobs. 4,800 is a big jump too. I wonder how ti's broken out by sector.

It's funny that you say that. I worked a forestry contract based out of Fredericton 2 summers ago and while it seemed like Fredericton had a disproportionate number of hotels, there were a couple times that it was extremely hard to find a room. As I recall I ended up having to go splits on a family suite at the Amsterdam inn with a couple friends because that was the smallest room available in that part of town one weekend.

That may be true, most cities have at least a few weekends per year that there is essentially "no vanancy". The fact is though the yearly vacancy rate is much more important to look at because you can't survive in the business being full for a month and empty the rest of the year. At this point where the numbers are declining in Freddy it doesn't make sense to build...it will only thin out the visitors more and more, perhaps a new hotel would do ok because it's nicer, but only at the expense of all other hotels.

I read in the Telegraph today that Stats Can says NB lost some 1000 people leaving the province last year. This is not good news.

New Brunswick's cities are still showing signs of growth (Moncton in particular); although, most of this growth isn't sustainable in the long-term because it's virtually all suburban.

Something drastic needs to be done for northern New Brunswick, which is in rapid decline. A sensible first step would be to amalgamate the entire north under one municipal government so there is less political waste and fragmentation, and a stronger pool of municipal revenues from which to invest. A second step would be to focus on construction jobs, via downtown revitalisation projects for residential and commercial.

It's time for New Brunswick to commit to density, while it still can.

Agreed!

You might be interested to know that there are actually a few grassroots movements up north to consolidate some towns and local service districts. Tracadie-Sheila is looking at merging with 18 neighbouring LSDs to form a town of 16,000 people (which would make it third biggest by a fairly large margin). You can read more about it at http://verslavenir.ca . It's also worth noting that Tracadie-Sheila grew by more than 10% in the last census - not something to sneeze at considering where they are.

Shippigan and Lameque are planning a similar amalgamation.

Then there have of course been the reorganizations that have happened over the last two decades. Most notably is the merger between Edmundston, St Jaques and environs, but also some smaller places like Belledune.

There's a hell of a lot of work to be done, that's for sure. But there actually is progress being made, particularly at the grassroots level. It's my understanding that the plans in Shippigan and Tracadie were both started locally and not imposed by Fredericton.

As for the rest of the province, quite a few municipalities are annexing territory that was previously unorganized, like Shediac and Fredericton. With the province's move to creating regional service districts, it will be easier still to consolidate unincorporated land into municipalities. Let's not forget that roughly half of the people in New Brunswick don't have a local government!

There is also a grassroots movement in Kings East for all of the LSDs and rural areas surrounding Sussex, although this has less momentum IMO than Tracadie's movement.

On a much happier note, I see that construction starts for January in New Brunswick were 138 million. That is a 207% increase over December and a 140% increase over January 2012! Wonder what the
reason is for this? We are almost on par with Manitoba in construction for the month of January this year. For example, 106 million in residential construction in Manitoba and 100 million in residential construction in New
Brunswick. Those are big numbers for out little province. We even surpassed Nova Scotia, which is a surprise to me. Nova Scotia Stats for January 2013 are 109 million. Up only 3.9% from January 2012.
Year over year was smashed the numbers in percentage increase of all other provinces.

Stats from: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tabl...con67a-eng.htm

Moncton and SJ CMAs accounted for more than half of that. Moncton 52M, SJ 31M. That said monthly permit values fluctuate so dramatically in small places like SJ/Monc/Fred and even NB as a whole...doesn't really mean anything because one large project can skew the numbers so much. The longer term trends are more useful. (Ex: my graph on the top of this page)