Business View Magazine - Nov 2023

188 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 11 a difficult time for the industry, but we grew a lot because it was also a time when some of the older groups went out of the hospitality sector and sold their properties to some new type of investment or management group,” he recounts. “You would take a property during COVID, almost strip it, re-brand it, and put it back on the market right after COVID. So, for us, these were much bigger projects. That was the reason why we kept growing. We had fewer customers, but the customers that we worked with did much larger projects within their properties.” The industry bounces back Today, with an industry-wide hotel occupancy rate across the U.S. and Canada that may be higher than its 2019 pre-COVID numbers, LOC International is preparing for even more growth. “In 2024, we are going full throttle into the U.S. market,” Beaudet reports. “We’re already selling in the U.S., but our USA brand is going to become a business itself. We’re going to have an LOC International base in the U.S., hiring Americans, and selling to Americans. And if you look at Canada right now, the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is expanding; that’s the biggest market. And the greater Vancouver area is going to boom; BC and Vancouver are short about 10,000 hotel rooms. And BC and Quebec are very similar in terms of having some big tourist cities.” “So, the owners and operators are working full throttle on their growth plans and I see more and more projects. We’re getting a lot of requests because people want to put their investments for 2024 on their books. So, it’s going to be a big year for remodeling in the hotel industry.” Meeting the challenges with new technology Beaudet notes that going forward, one of the biggest challenges for the hotel sector will be keeping up with guests’ ever-increasing demands for enhanced connectivity. “A lot of hotels were built to have, maybe one electronic per guest,” he says. “Today, the typical guest will walk in with four to six different ones – a watch, a computer, a