Solara Canmore

The question behind almost every search for Solara Canmore is whether a unit there can be rented out nightly and what it costs to hold. The record is clear on both counts. Solara Resort is a three-building condo hotel on Kananaskis Way, and on the Town of Canmore's 2025 assessment roll every titled dwelling parcel in the complex carries the same designation: Non-Residential Visitor Accommodation. Nightly rental is the permitted use. Living there is not.

What Solara Canmore is and where it sits

Solara Resort gives its address as 187 Kananaskis Way, on the north side of the Trans-Canada in the Bow Valley Trail corridor. The assessment roll shows a single condominium plan, 0711598, registered against three addresses on that street: 173, 187 and 191 Kananaskis Way. Alberta plan numbers encode their registration year, which dates the condominium to 2007.

The resort is operated by Bellstar Hotels & Resorts and markets one, two and three-bedroom suites with full kitchens, fireplaces and balconies, alongside an indoor hot tub, a relaxation pool, a fitness centre and heated underground parking. The Bow Valley Trail guide explains why the Town concentrated this kind of building on this stretch of road and why residential use in the corridor is deliberately capped.

Is nightly rental permitted at Solara

Yes. Across the three addresses the 2025 roll lists 216 titled dwelling parcels, and every one is assessment code 20V, "Non-Residential Visitor Accom". There are no tourist-home parcels and no residential parcels in the complex. Separately titled parking stalls make up most of the remaining entries, with a small number of non-residential parcels covering commercial and amenity space.

The Town defines visitor accommodation as "a building or group of buildings not for residential use, rather only for short-term stays where sleeping facilities are provided for visitors for periods of up to 30 days," and requires both a development permit and a business licence. One licence per unit, with the number shown in every advertisement. Because no new tourist-home use has been permitted anywhere in Canmore since 11 March 2025, existing nightly-rental designation is a fixed pool, which is the strategic case for buying into this corridor at all.

What it costs to own at Solara Canmore

Property tax is the largest fixed cost after the mortgage. Visitor-accommodation units are assessed in the Town's non-residential class, at 0.957% of assessed value all in for 2026. A primary residence pays 0.457% and a tourist home pays 0.832%, because tourist homes keep the residential education rate while hotel condos do not. On a $900,000 assessment the difference between the residential and non-residential rates is more than $4,500 a year. The property tax breakdown shows the four components that make up the bill.

Condo fees come second, and we will not invent a number. What is predictable is the shape of the fee in a building with a pool, hot tub, fitness room, elevators, commercial insurance and front-of-house space: it is a hotel operating budget divided across the units, and it is materially higher than a residential condo of the same floor area. Ask for the current budget, the estoppel certificate, the reserve fund study and two years of minutes.

Revenue costs come third. Whether the unit sits in the building's rental programme or you self-manage, a share of gross revenue goes to management, and on top of that sit the Alberta tourism levy at 6% for bookings after 31 March 2026, GST, cleaning and platform fees. The tourist home ROI calculator is built to take all of that off the top before it shows you a return.

Unit mix, floor plans and what the roll shows about value

Assessed values across the complex in the 2025 roll run from roughly $580,000 to just under $1.18 million per dwelling parcel, which reflects a genuine spread of one, two and three-bedroom layouts rather than a uniform hotel room product. Because the tax bill is a straight percentage of the individual assessment, a three-bedroom unit does not simply cost more to buy, it costs proportionally more to hold every year.

Ask for the assessment on the specific unit rather than a building average, and ask for that unit's own booking history. Floor, aspect, whether the suite faces the highway and whether it has a lock-off configuration move nightly rate and occupancy far more than the building's headline numbers suggest.

How Solara compares with the buildings around it

Solara's uniformity is worth something. Directly across Kananaskis Way, Falcon Crest Lodge mixes visitor-accommodation, tourist-home and a couple of residential titles inside one address, so the building name settles nothing there and every unit needs its own check. Blackstone is the other all-visitor-accommodation building on the street. Grande Rockies on Mountain Street runs a large tourist-home component alongside hotel-condo units.

If you want a nightly-rental holding with no ambiguity about what the title is, Solara and Blackstone are the two cleanest options in the corridor. If you want optionality between renting and living, neither is your building.

Financing, and who a Solara unit suits

Financing is the drawback buyers hear about last and should hear about first. A non-owner-occupied nightly-rental property cannot be insured by CMHC, so high-ratio financing is off the table and lenders treat condo-hotel titles as commercial or near-commercial exposure. In practice that means 25% to 35% down, a shorter list of lenders, and some who will decline the title type outright. Start with a broker who has funded a Bow Valley condo hotel before rather than meeting the constraint after you have written. Our guide to financing a short-term rental in Canmore sets out what lenders ask for.

The buyer this suits is an investor who wants nightly-rental income inside town limits, is comfortable owning a commercial-class asset, has the down payment, and treats a few personal weeks a year as a bonus rather than the point. The buyer it does not suit is anyone who needs the flexibility to occupy the unit, anyone relying on high-ratio financing, and anyone whose model assumes a residential tax rate. Highway proximity is worth a mention too: the corridor sits alongside the Trans-Canada, and traffic noise varies genuinely by building face and floor. Stand on the balcony before you decide.

What this means if you are buying at Solara Canmore

Solara Canmore is settled at the complex level: 216 of 216 dwelling parcels are visitor accommodation, so nightly rental is permitted with a licence and residence is not permitted at all. Your diligence moves to the money and the paperwork. Confirm which of the three addresses your unit sits at and which corporation it belongs to, get the estoppel certificate and reserve fund study, get the rental management agreement in writing, confirm the unit's business licence status with the Town, and underwrite the deal at 0.957% property tax. Then compare it against a tourist home in a mixed complex, which costs more but can be lived in, using the rest of the Canmore condo buildings comparison.