“Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program” for Businesses

 

Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program

The Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program replaces the federal wage and commercial rent subsidy programs which have run through most of the pandemic and provides targeted support to the tourism sector. 

The Tourism and Hospitality Recovery will provide rent and wage subsidies to organizations in selected sectors of the tourism and hospitality industry that have been deeply affected since the outset of the pandemic, suffering at least a 40% average decline in revenues over a 12-month period, and at least 40% in current-month revenue declines.

For details on this program, read the summary below and consult the full government page. 

If your business, charity or non-profit is subject to a qualifying public health restriction you may be eligible for a subsidy under the Tourism and Hospitality Recovery Program (THRP) even if you are not a qualifying tourism or hospitality entity.  This is called the Local Lockdown Program — see details here. 

Eligibility

Eligible businesses for this program will be drawn from a segment of the tourism sector, and will include tourism businesses such as hotels, restaurants, bars, festivals, travel agencies, tour operators, convention centres, convention and trade show organizers. More than 50% of your eligible revenue must come from one or more tourism or hospitality activities as defined here.

To use the program, these businesses must show both:

  1. An average monthly revenue reduction of at least 40% over March 2020 to February 2021.  Any periods in which an entity was not carrying on its ordinary operations for reasons other than a public health restriction (for example, because it is a seasonal business) would be excluded from the 12-month average calculation
    1. For any application period where your business is facing capacity limits of 50% or more, you do not have to do this 12-month average.
  2. A current-month revenue reduction of at least 40%.  This is calculated the same way as the previous wage subsidy, and thus would compare the current month versus the same month in 2019 or against the average of January-February 2020.

Subsidy Amount

The maximum subsidy rate for wage and rent subsidies would be set at 75%  from October 24, 2021, to March 12, 2022 (claim periods 22 to 26).  The maximum will then reduce by half from March 13 to May 7, 2022 (claim periods 27 and 28).

The subsidy would start at 40% for businesses with a 40% current-month revenue decline, increasing thereafter on a straight-line basis to a maximum rate of 75% for those with a current-month revenue decline of 75% or higher.  See the table below for how the calculations will work:


Additional Lockdown Support

In the event a business is forced to substantially reduce their operations because of a government-imposed public health lockdown  (this is defined as having stopped activities that accounted for at least 25% of their previous revenues for at least 7 days), then the business could get up to the maximum 75% subsidy rates based only on current-month declines, not the 12-month average as well.