Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401040328
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The percentage increase was the largest of any area of the state and well above the statewide increase of 0.2 percent, reported the Virginia Division of Tourism. It would appear to support the optimism with which state and local hospitality people view 1994.
Mark Brown, research manager at the state agency, predicted that the industry will get a boost in 1994 because of the opening of several tourist attractions, including Roanoke County's Explore Park.
The downside of the industry, Brown said, is that marketing budgets and staffing for tourism offices "are believed to be flat or in decline."
"My sense is that the motel business will improve a good deal in '94," said Granger Macfarlane. He is president of Eastern Motor Inns Inc. of Roanoke, which owns and operates several budget and mid-price motels in Virginia and North Carolina.
Among Macfarlane's Roanoke Valley properties are the Colony House Motel, two Hampton Inns and an Econo Lodge.
Macfarlane said he spent $3 million in 1993 to convert and expand the two Hampton Inns, which also had been Econo Lodge motels.
He said 1993 motel business picked "up some," which meant it was better than the previous four flat years. He said he couldn't "get a handle" on the amount of increase, however, because one of the motels had been closed part of the year for renovation.
Host Report, a semiannual survey of the hotel industry compiled by Smith Travel Research and published by Arthur Andersen & Co., recently reported average room occupancy for U.S. hotels in the first half of 1993 was 62.4 percent, up 1.8 percent over the first six months of 1992.
The performance, the latest available statistic, was close to the prerecession peak in 1989 of 62.6 percent, said the Host Report. The survey included 2,400 hotels with more than 566,000 guest rooms.
Roger Cline, worldwide director of Arthur Andersen's hospitality consulting practice based in New York, predicted profits of the U.S. hotel industry for 1993 would total $61.3 billion, a 4.2 percent gain over 1992.
The World Travel and Tourism Council projects that tourism will be a $3.4 trillion business worldwide this year and employ more than 200 million people directly and indirectly.
"Travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world," said James Robinson III, chairman of the council. He said the industry employs one in every nine workers and will pay $665 billion in total taxes in 1994.
And no one is happier to see it turn upward than the hotel investors.
Investors have suffered some of the worst times imaginable since 1985, when overbuilding of new rooms around the country quickly swamped added demand, sending occupancy rates and returns through the floor.
"For hotel investors, enduring the past eight years has been like renting a room with yesterday's sheets, dirty ashtrays, a TV on the blink and no hot water," wrote the authors of 1994's "Emerging Trends in Real Estate," a publication of Chicago-based Real Estate Research Corp. and Equitable Real Estate Investment Management Inc.
by CNB