Even more so than other buildings in Kensington, hotels seem to have been particularly afflicted by disastrous fires. Whether due to the fact that they had so many rooms which needed oil lighting, or the fact that so many different people passed through their doors, several majestic wooden inns ended up being reduced to ashes. The Eureka Hotel, located across Victoria Street from Thomas Barrett's establishment, went down in flames in the 1890's.
The
Commercial Hotel owned by a Mr. Earle suffered a similar
fate in 1924, and when it burned, it nearly took the
entire town along with it. In the 1920's, hotels were
required by law to provide a livery for
their guests, where their horses could be stabled and
fed. The Commercial Hotel had such a barn, and it was
well stocked with hay and straw to meet the bedding and
feeding needs of the livestock. But in retrospect, the
low-slung building was also a dangerous fire trap, a
tinderbox waiting for ignition. At one in the morning on
August 16, 1924, a lantern accidentally overturned on
these dry bales, and the stable began burning out of
control. As fate would 
have it, the stable was
attached to the hotel, and the hotel was immediately
adjacent to Tuplin's
immense store on Broadway Street.
With so many large wooden buildings located so close
together, the entire block was soon engulfed in a huge
inferno, and citizens could only stand back helplessly
and watch it take its terrible course. Only two buildings
survived the blaze, and the Commercial Hotel was not
among them.
Despite this adversity, there was a steady demand for rooms in Kensington, and other establishments soon sprung up to take the place of those that had disappeared. Scotia House and Burk's Hotel both welcomed visitors throughout the 1880's. Mrs. James Sims followed the Sims' hotel tradition by operating Clark's Hotel, and Brookins Lodge and Restaurant was a popular stop-over in the 1930's. More recently, the growth of the tourism on the Island has led to a resurgence of the hotel industry in Kensington, especially since the town is located only fifteen minutes away from the land of Anne of Green Gables. Every summer, the area is inundated with hundreds of thousands of visitors, who are cheerfully hosted in local bed-and-breakfast establishments and cozy inns.
