Vancouver approves floatel on Vancouver’s Coal Harbour waterfront
The 131-metre long and 18-metre wide, six-level vessel will feature a hotel-bar, shops, restaurant, a spa, and viewing areas on the north and west sides.
By Tiffany Crawford, Cheryl Chan
Last updated 2 hours ago
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A proposal to install a 250-room floating hotel on a Coal Harbour water lot north of the Vancouver Convention Centre’s west building has been approved by Vancouver’s city council.
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The 131-metre long, 18-metre wide, six-level vessel, called a floatel, will feature a hotel-bar, shops, restaurant, a spa, and viewing areas on the north and west sides, and will connect to the shore with a series of pedestrian bridges.
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The floatel is a joint venture between the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre and Sunborn International Holding, a Finnish developer that specializes in luxury floating hotels, with two open already — in London and Gibraltar.
In a news release, Sunborn said the approval marked a major milestone for the project.
“We think Vancouver is the perfect place to expand, with its natural beauty, commitment to sustainability, and strong need for more hotel capacity,” said Sunborn CEO Hans Niemi.
The council’s decision clears the way for the project to move into its next phase of development and is “an exciting addition” to the company’s group of landmark floating hotels, the company said.
Sunborn will now continue to advance the project timetable, implementation structure and financing arrangements in collaboration with its local partners and stakeholders, it added.
Several concerns were raised at Tuesday night’s public hearing, including that the flotel would block public access views from the seawall, that it was “tacky”, and that the developers aren’t providing any meaningful public benefits except for access to the dock, primarily just to serve their bar and café.
Another issue was that it is being built at a time when there is a housing affordability crisis for Vancouver residents and that a luxury hotel isn’t going to serve the people who live and work here.
“I recognize this is a luxury hotel and it won’t necessarily be affordable to a lot of folks and there are disconnects there from issues of affordability, but hotel development is about economic development,” said Coun. Pete Fry.
“And when I look at the need for new hotel rooms, I also consider the strain that short-term rentals have put on rental stock. So even if this is a luxury hotel, I know it will contribute on the whole to more hotel rooms and take away from that short-term rental stock which I do think is a problem for long-term tenants in our city.”
Coun. Lenny Zhou said he thinks the floatel would be good because it will support the local economy, and it will make Vancouver a leader in innovative solutions when it comes to accommodation.
Another councillor, Lucy Maloney, also supported the development, saying the view that would be partly blocked had already been done so by the Convention Centre, but voiced some concern that the developer has not offered to pay at least some of the contributions, given how strongly the public feels about the deficit in public amenities.
Unite Here Local 40, which represents hotel and food service workers in B.C., opposes the project.
Union president Zailda Chan said the floatel has minimal public benefits and raises questions about sewage management and impact on the environment.
“This is a bad deal for Vancouver,” said Chan in a statement on Wednesday. “Rather than address the affordability crisis facing working people in Vancouver, council is easing the way for luxury hotel developments that fail to contribute their fair share to our city.”
No outline for when the hotel would arrive in Vancouver has been set.
What will the Vancouver floatel be like?
Renderings depict a sleek, modern superyacht with six decks docked on the northeast corner of the Vancouver Convention Centre, near where The Drop steel sculpture sits on the seawall.
The 250-room hotel spans about 136 metres in length, or about 3.5 times the depth of a standard residential lot in Vancouver, and about 19.5 metres in height, about the equivalent of a five- or six-storey building.
The hotel will offer a 130-metre public dock with gardens, seating areas, and a planned café and spa that will be open to the public from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. every day.
Guests can access the hotel through a new elevator and stairway off the seawall.
The hotel will be low-carbon, use no fossil fuels, not discharge anything into the water, and create no emissions from engines or generators, according to the city. Parking, drop-offs and loading will use existing spaces at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
How common are these floatels?
Floatels, or floating accommodations built directly on water in lakes, rivers or oceans, are growing in popularity.
According to a Strategic Market Research report from 2024, the floating hotel market is expected to more than double from about $1.8 billion US in 2023 to $3.5 billion by 2030.
It attributed the growth to increased demand for experiential travel and ecotourism and new technologies in marine engineering.
Examples of floatels around the world range from a luxury spa hotel in the remote Swedish Arctic, generous-sized villas floating in the turquoise Caribbean seas, and rustic, solar-powered bungalows in the Brazilian Amazon.
Some floatels use repurposed historical vessels that have been converted to hotels, such as the Queen Mary, a former Cunard transatlantic cruise ship now permanently docked in Long Beach, Calif., or the Fingal, a former lighthouse service tender turned 22-cabin luxury hotel docked in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Sunborn, however, has pioneered the concept of purpose-built superyacht hotels that are permanently docked and operate like land-based hotel.
What other properties does Sunborn operate?
Sunborn runs two other yacht floatels.
It opened its first one in London in 2003, which it upgraded to a larger yacht in 2014. The 120-metre Sunborn London, moored at the Royal Victoria Docks near London’s Excel Centre, has 138 guest rooms, event spaces, and terraces with views of the Thames River.
Room prices for a one-night stay in July ranges from about $430 to $990, comparable to most London hotels.
Sunborn plans to replace this hotel with a larger vessel, with 225 rooms, citing the current property’s high demand and occupancy rate.
Sunborn also runs a floatel in Gibraltar, billed as the world’s first five-star floating resort, with 189 rooms and seven decks. At 142 metres, it is bigger than the London hotel or the planned Vancouver hotel, and has a ballroom, banquet hall, casino, and a restaurant with a retractable roof.
Rooms at the Gibraltar location start at $464 for a standard room and up to $1,600 for the penthouse suite.
The properties are well-rated on travel sites online, with many travels highlighting the waterfront location, panoramic views and the novelty aspect of staying on the water.
With files from Denise Ryan
