Ottawa edges ahead of Winnipeg on higher occupancy (60% vs 48%), stronger RevPAR (£24 vs £18).
Head-to-head metrics
| Ottawa | Winnipeg | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 60% | 48% |
| Median daily rate | £64 | £56 |
| Median RevPAR | £24 | £18 |
| Active listings | 1,888 | 1,218 |
| YoY occupancy | +25.5 pts | +11.8 pts |
| YoY daily rate | +2.8% | -4% |
| Regulation risk | — | — |
| Annual night cap | None | None |
| License required | No | No |
Full analysis: Ottawa vs Winnipeg
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Ottawa finishes decisively ahead of Winnipeg. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 33.1% higher in Ottawa: £24 against £18. Ottawa sells 12 more points of its calendar — 60% median occupancy against 48% in Winnipeg. That is not a rounding difference, and it compounds over a hold period.
Ottawa takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £64 against £56 — and still fills more of the year, 60% against 48%. A market that leads on price and utilisation at once is normally one where demand has outrun supply, rather than one where hosts are discounting to keep the calendar busy. RevPAR reflects the double advantage at £24 against £18.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Winnipeg is not simply the weaker market of the two. Winnipeg is the less crowded of the two — 1,218 active listings to 1,888 — so a well-run property has fewer near-identical rivals to out-rank. Winnipeg sits at the cheaper end at £56 a night against £64, which lowers the bar for filling shoulder-season dates and usually tracks a lower purchase price too. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
Neither Ottawa nor Winnipeg currently has a verified short-term rental regulation record in our register, so the comparison above is a yield comparison only. Regulation is the single largest source of downside in this asset class — an unverified market is an unpriced risk, not an absent one.
The two calendars also behave differently. Ottawa peaks in September at 53.8% and bottoms in February at 29.6%; Winnipeg runs from 52.6% in September down to 25.2% in February. Ottawa is the steadier of the two at 24.2 points peak-to-trough against 27.4 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Winnipeg concentrates its return into a shorter window and rewards operators who price the peak aggressively instead of holding a flat rate all year.
Who each suits, then. Ottawa suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry. It is also the momentum side of this pair. Winnipeg answers to the same regulatory profile, so the split between them is operational rather than legal. Every figure above comes from the same Inside Airbnb snapshot pipeline on both sides, dated 2025-09, filtered to listings with at least one booking in the last twelve months. Occupancy medians are drawn from 707 active Ottawa listings and 546 in Winnipeg.
Frequently asked questions
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