Short answer: Vancouver hotels are few in number but large. The City of Vancouver's 2026 business licences list 102 hotels and motels inside the city, and 45 of them report 40 or more employees. Those 45 employ 94% of all reported hotel staff, and 37 of them are Downtown. Across the river in Richmond, the City's business directory lists 27 hotels with a median of 40 staff each, most of them clustered near YVR and the Canada Line.
This report is for hotel general managers, operations and property teams, and anyone sizing the Vancouver hotel market from public data rather than booking sites. Everything here can be checked against the two cities' own published data.
Vancouver hotels by staff size
| Reported employees | Hotel or motel licences, 2026 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 6 | 6% |
| 1–9 | 31 | 30% |
| 10–19 | 9 | 9% |
| 20–39 | 11 | 11% |
| 40–99 | 23 | 23% |
| 100 or more | 22 | 22% |
| All | 102 |
Issued 2026 licences, business type "Hotel or Motel", premises inside the City of Vancouver. Source: City of Vancouver business licences, extract 2026-10-11. VendFynd analysis.
The median is 25 employees, but the middle hides two different businesses. About a third of licences are small operators reporting under 10 staff: small motels, inns and residential hotels. The other half are full-service and limited-service hotels with 40 or more, and 22 report 100 or more.
Staff are concentrated in the big ones. The 102 licences report 8,472 employees in total, and 7,938 of them (94%) are at the 45 hotels reporting 40 or more.
Where they are
| Local area | All hotel licences | 20+ staff | 40+ staff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downtown | 73 | 43 | 37 |
| West End | 18 | 10 | 6 |
| Fairview | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Hastings-Sunrise | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Marpole | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Strathcona, Grandview-Woodland, Renfrew-Collingwood (2 each), Mount Pleasant (1) | 7 | 0 | 0 |
The downtown peninsula holds 91 of 102 hotel licences and 43 of the 45 large ones. Outside it, Vancouver hotels are mostly small.
Three years of licences
| Folder year | Issued hotel licences | 40+ staff | 100+ staff | Median staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 102 | 39 | 20 | 19 |
| 2025 | 98 | 42 | 20 | 25 |
| 2026 (to Oct 11) | 102 | 45 | 22 | 25 |
The number of hotels is flat, which fits a downtown market where new hotels are rare. What moved is the size reported: licences at 40+ staff rose from 39 to 45. Employee counts are self-reported each year, so part of that change may be how businesses fill in the form rather than hiring.
Richmond for comparison
Richmond's hotels serve a different trip: the airport. YVR handled more than 26.9 million passengers in 2025, and Richmond's economic development office counts about 25 hotels within 10 minutes of the airport. The City of Richmond's own business directory gives the staff picture.
| Vancouver (City licences, 2026) | Richmond (City directory, Oct 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel licences | 102 | 27 |
| Median staff per hotel | 25 | 40 (full and part time) |
| 40+ staff | 45 | 14 |
| 100+ staff | 22 | 6 |
| Total reported staff | 8,472 | 1,971 (1,509 full time, 462 part time) |
| Where | 37 of 45 large ones Downtown | 22 of 27 in postal district V6X; 2 on Sea Island (V7B) |
Richmond has a quarter as many hotels, but half of them report 40 or more staff, a higher share than Vancouver's 44%. Fewer small motels is the main reason. Richmond's directory also splits full-time from part-time staff: about a quarter of Richmond hotel staff (23%) are part time.
Both cities tax hotel rooms the same way. Short-term accommodation in BC carries 8% PST, and both Vancouver and Richmond are participating areas for the Municipal and Regional District Tax at 3%, per the Province's MRDT map. Richmond's 3% rate took effect on July 1, 2017.
Why a vending company counts hotel staff
Guests are the obvious buyers: late arrivals, early flights, people without a car when the restaurant is shut. But a hotel's staff are the steady part. A 100-person hotel runs around the clock, with housekeeping, front desk, maintenance and night audit teams on shifts. That's why our site-fit scorer rates hotels 26 of 30 for location type, just behind warehouses, gyms and auto service, and why it asks for staff numbers separately.
If your hotel is one of the 45 in Vancouver or 14 in Richmond with 40 or more staff, a guest-floor machine plus one in the staff room is usually worth asking about. A smaller inn can still qualify on guest traffic and hours. Use the people-on-site estimator if your staff are spread across shifts. Our Vancouver headcount report puts hotels alongside offices, clinics and warehouses, and our PST guide covers the tax on what the machine sells, which is a separate question from the room tax above.
Placement is $0 to the hotel: the operator covers the machine, install, stocking, service and removal, and you provide the spot and an outlet (a refrigerated machine uses about $15–20 a month in power). Your people choose the menu, most hotels receive a commission, agreed in writing before install, and it's month to month with 30 days' notice under our host terms. See if your hotel qualifies.
About this data
- Vancouver: City of Vancouver "Business licences" open data, folder years 2024–2026, extract 2026-10-11. Business type "Hotel or Motel", status "Issued", premises inside the city. Employee numbers are reported by each business and may include staff at other locations. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Vancouver.
- Richmond: City of Richmond Business Directory, "Richmond Based Businesses" download, retrieved 2026-10-12: current licences with a business location in Richmond. Hotels are licences with NAICS code 721111; staff is full time plus part time as reported. The casino hotel licence (721120), bed and breakfasts (721191) and rooming houses are left out.
- Not comparable one to one: the two cities collect staff numbers differently (Vancouver one figure, Richmond full and part time), so read the comparison as shape, not precision.
- No business is named. Names were not used in this analysis.
Sources
- City of Vancouver, Business licences (open data), extract 2026-10-11: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/explore/dataset/business-licences/
- Open Government Licence – Vancouver: https://opendata.vancouver.ca/pages/licence/
- City of Richmond, Download the Business Directory, retrieved 2026-10-12: https://www.richmond.ca/business-development/resources/business-directory/BDdownload.aspx
- Government of BC, PST and MRDT on accommodation: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/sales-taxes/pst/publications/accommodation
- Government of BC, MRDT location map: https://municipal-regional-district-tax-map.apps.gov.bc.ca
- Richmond Economic Development, Tourism (hotels near YVR): https://businessinrichmond.ca/key-sectors/tourism/
- YVR, 2025 passenger record (2026-02-03): https://news.yvr.ca/yvr-marks-record-breaking-year/