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Tourism operators in Kelowna, B.C., are entering the 2026 season with cautious optimism as new figures from Tourism Kelowna show visitor spending and activity increased slightly in 2025, despite some businesses experiencing a slower season.
As he prepares his fleet for summer, the owner of SunWave Boat rentals says last year fell short of expectations.
“We’re hoping for a very busy season, especially after such a slow 2025 year,” said Andre Plyusnin. “I think we were about 40 per cent slower.”
According to Tourism Kelowna, while visitor spending growth wasn’t evenly felt across all parts of the tourism industry, it says 2025 still turned out to be a strong year.
In its annual community report, the organization said Kelowna welcomed the 2.2 million tourist visits in 2025, a 5.2 per cent increase over 2024.
Visitor spending also rose by two per cent to $1.2 billion.
One area that declined, however, was the average length of stay.
Tourism Kelowna reported the average trip dropped 4.3 per cent to just over two and a half days.
Some in the industry hope the numbers will increase as more short-term rental options soon become available in Kelowna.
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“To date, the city’s business licensing department has received about 350 business licence applications for short term rental major operators,” said Nola Kilmartin, department head of development planning at the City of Kelowna.
The provincial exemption on certain short-term rental restrictions takes effect on June 1st.
“The availability of more accommodation options is kind of perceived as good for all accommodations in Kelowna and good for tourism as well,” said Kilmartin.
Major events in 2026 including the Memorial Cup, a pair of CFL games and the B.C. Summer Games are expected to play a major role in this year’s tourism season.
In its 2025 report, Tourism Kelowna said major events including the Montana’s Brier and Canadian Country Music Week generated more than $40 million in economic activity for the region.
These types of events, according to tourism officials across the region, are considered significant in helping to shape the success of a season.
“We get to introduce ourselves to brand new visitors who will be following a certain type of event and not necessarily have ever thought about coming to our region,” said Ellen Walker-Matthews, CEO of the Thompson-Okanagan Tourism Association.
“But they also help to smooth over revenues so that people can keep their businesses operating, keep going through what are often slower days.”
Walker-Matthews added tourism success in one community does have ripple effects in the entire region.
“Visitors don’t parachute into a location and just stay there. If you think of yourself when you travel, you go to somewhere. It might be the anchor spot that you decided to visit but you’ll go and take day trips. Sometimes you’ll take overnight trips and sometimes you’ll come back to a place and you’ll break the trip up into different locations,” Walker-Matthews said.
“So it really impacts everybody. So one location doing well means everybody starts to do better.”
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