Sol Zia.

executive director

Sol Zia joined the Calgary Hotel Association (CHA), as Executive Director, in October of 2019. His 25+ year career has spanned growth and senior leadership positions across travel and tourism including Air Canada/Canadian Airlines, Sears Travel, TransAmerica, McCann Worldwide, Loyalty One/AIR MILES, WestJet and currently the Calgary Hotel Association.

In addition to his travel & tourism career, Sol has over a decade of experience in political advocacy, inter-government relations and Board leadership. He has been a past academic leader in the areas of Loyalty Programs, Revenue Management and Membership programs.

Sol has been active in Calgary and the Province advocating for the visitor economy locally and provincially and working collaboratively with his members, partners, and orders of Government to fulfill the Calgary Hotel Association strategic plan and to support its mission to create an optimal business environment for the hospitality, travel and tourism industry in Calgary through collaboration, investment, advocacy.

While the CHA’s primary body of work is around investment with significant partners including Tourism Calgary, Calgary Stampede and Calgary Arts Development, to name a few, advocacy success has been the most visible outcome from Sol’s delivery. Under Sol’s leadership Calgary remains the only municipal market in Canada to receive a comprehensive, multi-year, property tax deferral program for years 2020, 2021 and 2022, from the City of Calgary. A program that still has member properties structuring property tax well into 2025.

Calgary was also the only jurisdiction to provide support funding directly for sales efforts for hotels, amounting to $300,000 in pandemic recovery support funds, just for the hotel sector. Through 2021 and 2022, the CHA collaborated with City of Calgary Tax & Assessment to re-engineer the assessment and valuation formula with the City of Calgary and reduced assessment and valuation for tax purposes by over 33%.

Even with the multi-year decrease, most recently the Calgary Hotel Association supported re-assessment and valuation work, that reduced the increases proposed for 2024 to under 13%. Calgary is viewed as the role model for hotel proper property taxation by jurisdictions across the Country.