The hotel costs in Canada have sky rocketed since Covid. I don’t get why! A normal standard hotel room in a city used to be $200-300 tops. Now it’s almost double that. Unless one is on a corporate rate the nightly stay is upwards of $300-500/ night. Crazy. If it’s in peak day/season easily can be double that.
To add to what
@kEiThZ has said above, many cities have removed substantial portions of the supply leasing them as shelters.
There are at least 17 hotels currently being used as shelters; this is beyond the motels that the City purchased pre-pandemic for housing refugee families.
That represents at least 1,500 rooms of supply.
On top of that, the City has bought some hotel sites as permanent housing (Bond Place Hotel in Toronto) withdrawing another 285 rooms; and again going back to before the pandemic, a sizable hotel at Carlton/Jarvis became a student residence, and more than a decade ago, the University of Toronto bought the former downtown Holiday Inn behind City Hall.
On top of all that, condos have removed supply; the former Sutton Place Hotel downtown is now condos.
Room supply in 2017, in the downtown area of Toronto was no greater than in the year 2000; and the supply has since shrunk. A small number of hotels have been added, but more beds withdrawn even as the population has surged.
Edit to add, you'll see different submarkets preforming differently.
So, for instance, room supply near Pearson is more robust than downtown.
*****
That said, if you're looking at off-season pricing (now), you'll find Toronto rates have moderated quite a bit. There are rooms at the Royal York next week for under $300 a night.
For comparison, The Chelsea will cost you more than $350 a night by mid-June, the Royal York starts from $460 that weekend.