Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501070080
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Probably never before have 330 luxury rooms hit the local hotel market all at once, as will happen in April. And never before have they been right next door to a state-of-the-art conference facility that is expected to draw money-spending tourists from around the nation.
The $42 million hotel-conference center project is likely to be this year's single biggest economic development initiative in the Roanoke Valley. Further business growth and a resurgence of downtown retail activity hinge on its success.
It's rare when the city's business and political leaders have placed so many economic development eggs into a single basket,said Brian Wishneff, acting director of the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission.. That fact has spawned butterflies in a few local stomachs, but the doubters seem to remain in the minority.
``The package of the two together is what's really going to make this thing hum here,'' predicts Granger Macfarlane, a former state senator and president of Roanoke-based Eastern Motor Inns Inc., which operates 281 hotel and motel rooms in the area.
Part of the optimism stems from a travel industry that continues to rebound.
Virginia in general was a hospitable place in 1994, particularly after balmy spring weather melted the vexing ice that glazed much of the state early in the year.
Travel expenditures statewide climbed to an estimated $9.5 billion - still below the booming tourism years of the late 1980s, adjusting for inflation, but steadily increasing, according to the state Division of Tourism.
In the first half of 1994, restaurant and other food-service sales jumped 8.3 percent compared with the same period in 1993. Car rentals, meanwhile, surged 9.6 percent above strong sales a year earlier, according to the Virginia Department of Tourism. Figures for Western Virginia were not available.
Statewide visitor inquiries through November rose 13 percent compared with record-breaking levels for the first 11 months of 1993.
Hotels and motels posted more modest but steady gains. Statewide, lodging sales increased 1.1 percent for the first three quarters of 1994 from the corresponding period of 1993, the agency reports.
In the Roanoke area, average occupancy rates at hotels grew from 63.7 percent to 64.6 percent through September, the most recent statistics available. Room rates climbed an average of more than 2 percent. Both will continue to grow, according to barometers measured by Horwath Hospitality Consulting, which monitors the hotel industry for its Lodging Market Trends Reports.
``Travel has increased. Commercial and group demand has increased. The hotel industry definitely had a better year than the early 1990s,'' said Neal Floyd, a Horwath analyst based in Charlotte, N.C.
At the same time, the convention business in Roanoke is on a decided upswing. From fiscal year 1993 to fiscal year 1994, the number of conventions almost doubled, from 18 to 31, and the number of attendees grew from 48,530 to 81,155, said Martha Mackey, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau.
The reason that hotel occupancy rates didn't increase as dramatically is that many of the attendees came from within driving distance of Roanoke. The conference center will boost the number of out-of-towners, she said.
And the revamped Hotel Roanoke is unlikely merely to steal business from other hotels, a fear some operators have voiced in the past. The visitors bureau, which tripled the size of its sales staff during 1994, is targeting groups that wouldn't have come to Roanoke in the past, she said.
The sales staff of Doubletree Hotels Inc., Hotel Roanoke's operator, is doing the same thing, Wishneff said.
Macfarlane said he believes the conference center will be a boon not only to Hotel Roanoke, but to every motel and hotel in the area.
``They can have multiple meetings at the conference center that can handle far more people than [Hotel Roanoke] has rooms for,'' Macfarlane said. The spillover will be picked up by other hotels such as the Radisson Patrick Henry, his own Hampton Inns, and even the Roanoke Airport Marriott and Sheraton Inn Roanoke Airport, he said.
by CNB