According to this article from the Arizona Republic, the success of the Phoenix Civic Plaza’s $600 million expansion depends on a new 1,000-room hotel.

“Groups will not come here without that hotel. They just won’t,” said White, vice president of sales and marketing for the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau, in the article.

The City Council votes June 16 on “whether to move forward on a publicly funded hotel, targeted to open by 2008 when Civic Plaza’s expansion is completed.”

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According to a recent forecast from PKF Consulting and the International Association of Conference Centers, North American conference centers should see continued growth in both occupancy and and revenue per available room.

“The level of booking activity for most markets in the fourth quarter of 2003 was substantially greater than in the prior year and greater than in any other quarter of the year, and early returns for 2004 indicate that this increased level of activity is being sustained,” said PKF Consulting Executive Vice President David E. Arnold, who oversaw the study, in a press release.

In the report, called IACC/PKF Consulting Trends in the Conference Center Industry, a Statistical and Financial Profile for 2003, Arnold says that this year’s occupancy rates will grow significantly, leading to increased rate growth next year. While those on the coasts are recovering quicker, centers in the central states are also seeing progress.

Arnold also reports that “most meeting planners that we have spoken with recently believe that their activity will increase this year due to both improvement in the economy and pent-up demand for training and management development meetings.”

Contact Claude Vargo (404) 842-1150 ext. 237, or claude.vargo@pkfc.com, for information on how to purchase a copy of the report.

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According to this article from The Dallas Morning News, Wyndham International, the hotel chain that landed at the bottom of the NAACP’s annual lodging report four years ago, came in second (behind Marriott International) in the latest NAACP rankings. In fact, the turnaround in Wyndham’s diversity-friendliness has even landed the chain’s chairman, Fred Kleisner, the job of chair of the NAACP’s corporate giving program and chairman for the American Hotel and Lodging’s new Multicultural & Diversity Advisory Council.

After getting a “D” grade four years ago, the company got moving to make its hotels diversity-friendly: It nominated women and minorities to its board, contracted with more women- and minority-owned companies, and “established an external diversity board to help guide how the company pursues minority customers–a strategy similar to the one it launched in 1997 to court women business travelers,” the article says. The chain also launched an ad campaign to get a piece of the lucrative gay and lesbian market earlier this year.

And all the effort is paying off. The chain has quadrupled its revenues from minority customers (from $1 million to $4 million), and landed a three-year contract for the 3,500-attendee Black Enterprise magazine’s Entrepreneur conference. The Wyndham Palace Resort & Spa also snagged next month’s “Gay and Lesbian Day at Walt Disney World” in Orlando, Fla.

“’Some associations and groups started doing business with us because of our diversity initiatives,’ said Donna Deberry, Wyndham’s executive vice president of global diversity and corporate affairs, in the article. ‘They wanted to do business with hotels that shared their values.’”

All I can say is: What a great turnaround story! And what a great example for others who may not be quite as accommodating to all as they should be.

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From a really interesting article on hotel-online.com:

“Westin, Seattle: Changed incandescent bulbs to energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs and improving control mechanisms. Result: Achieved 66 percent reduction in guest room wattage and an annual savings of $400,000.

“Hotel Bel Air: Undertook a comprehensive environmental program. Result: Saved $10,000 in 10 months plus increased revenue from the sale of cardboards.

“Hyatt Regency, Chicago: A comprehensive waste reduction and recycling program. Result: Recovered approximately 70% of recyclable materials and cut waste hauling costs in half. Recycling program has resulted in recovery of $120,000 in hotel items.

And that’s just the start. Going green saves money AND the environment. What’s not to like about that?

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According to a panel at the recent American Hotel & Lodging Association U.S. Lodging Industry Summit, here are some of the latest hospitality trends:

-More people are researching and booking through the Internet—from $1.27 billion in 2003 to $1.66 billion in 2005, a 30 percent increase.

-Last year’s 1.6 percent average daily rooms-sold rate will increase to 4.5 percent this year.

-Occupancy will increase from 59.2 percent in 2003 to 60.8 percent in 2004; average daily rates also will go from $83.12 (0.1 percent) in 2003 to $85.11 (2.4 percent) in 2004. Demand also will be heading upward.

-Generation Xers are starting to catch up to Baby Boomers in their travel-spending habits.

-All the new construction and re-flagging leading hotel companies have been doing will add up to more than half of the total lodging available this year: a total of 165,138 properties.

-Security concerns are taking a back seat to the economy when it comes to reasons why travel is difficult for them.

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A few years ago, I was looking for small-scale furniture to fit a nook in our house, and found just what I wanted at a conference center. Unfortunately, they couldn’t sell it to me, and their distributor only worked with facilities, not individual buyers. Well, that’s all changing, according to this article from the Denver Post, which explains how hotels are now selling everything from robes to a $4,000 Ritz-Carlton bed set. The Broadmoor actually has turned this into a tidy profit center, with $500,000 annual room amenity sales.

From the article: “High-end hotels, coming off three years of record-low occupancies, have turned guest rooms into virtual retail showrooms, offering for sale nearly everything in the room.

“’It’s catchy, it’s new, it’s different,” said Robert Mandelbaum, an Atlanta director at PKF Consulting, a hospitality research firm. “But I don’t think most people think, ‘Oh, wow, let’s go buy hotel furniture.’”

I must be ahead of the times on this one—that’s exactly what I thought at that conference center. And I have often found myself lusting after various beds and armoires I came to know and love during a hotel stay.

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A sneak preview from the June issue of CMI (which will be online in a couple of weeks): Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, prefers Comfort Inns, Holiday Inns, and the Hotel Fort Des Moines when criss-crossing the country on campaign stops. President George W. Bush likes Marriott and Hilton hotels when he’s on the stump, according to fundrace.org, a site that tracks money spent by the candidates in a variety of areas, including hotels and airfare.

And both candidates are true red, white, and blue in their choice of air carrier: Bush spends the most money on United tickets, Kerry on those from American Airlines.

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According to this article, the news from the American Hotel & Lodging Association recently was, basically, let the good times roll for hoteliers.

For example, Mark Lomanno, president of Smith Travel Research said, “The demand side of lodging is coming back and it is coming back quickly.” For example, March 2004’s occupancy rate of 69.8 percent is even higher than its June 1996 peak of 64.9 percent.

Bjorn Hanson, group industry leader, hospitality and leisure practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., is reported in the article as saying that “average daily rooms sold is expected to grow 4.6% this year and then 2.3% in 2005; end-of-year room supply is expected to be up 1.4% this year and 1.6% in 2005; occupancy for 2004 should come in at 61.2% and rise to 61.7% next year; average daily rate is projected to increase 1.9% this year and then jump another 3% in 2005; and RevPAR is expected to rise 5.2% in 2004 and 3.9% in 2004.”

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Here’s another spin on the attrition gig—remind people that they’ll get what they pay for if they reserve their room through third-party sites like Expedia and Orbitz. And what they’ll get, according to a study by D.K. Shifflet & Associates, is a much better experience if they book directly.

Whether they’re booking luxury, moderate, or budget hotels, “guests who booked via the hotel’s website rated the hotel significantly higher in service, and value, than guests who reserved through 3rd party sites, such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity,” says a press release.
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But this is good news/bad news for hotels. While it may encourage more people to book directly on the hotel’s Web site—something many are encouraging to take back control over their inventory–Doug Shifflet, president and CEO, says the sub-standard rooms and reduced service some guests are getting after reserving with a third party “can be hazardous to a chain’s image, reduce trial conversion to loyal guests, and eventually impact a brand’s long-term profit.”

Comments?

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It depends, but if you’re linked to the hotel brand’s site, you should be in the pink, according to the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International and Smith Travel Research’s first-ever hotel Internet marketing metrics survey. The results, presented at the second HSMAI Hotel Internet Marketing Strategy Conference, showed that 75 percent of Internet hotel room sales happened on the brand’s own site.

A total of 34 branded hotel chains, representing nearly 1.2 million rooms, participated in the survey, which reviewed 2002 data against 2003 results of all online reservations by brands, third party sites and GDS sites.

“Internet reservations and especially the impact of third party sites is on everybody’s mind today,” said Mark Lomanno, president of Smith Travel Research, in a press release.

More preliminary findings:

1. Brand.com (hotel branded Web sites) drives Internet business with 75 percent of the volume
2. Brand.com reservations increased 32.5% in 2003 over 2002 to 14.8 million
3. InterActive Corp, with Expedia, Hotels.com and Hotwire, combined marketshare makes up 11% of the total reservation volume
4. Total third-party share of online reservations shifted from 23 percent to 25 percent from 2002 to 2003. This two-point shift represents 4.9 million reservations.
5. Amadeus had the largest gain among the GDS, but Sabre still rules with 50+ % of GDS volume
6. Brand.com sites produce the highest ADR, but were flat year over year
7. Third party sites’ ADRs increased slightly from 2002 to 2003

Comments?

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