Hoteliers see conference center benefits

Business Report Correspondent

BOULDER ? Hotels in Boulder expect a positive impact if a new convention center and hotel complex could be built in the city. The impact would vary based upon the size, location and brand name of existing hotels, according to hotel officials and convention experts.

Bill Zollars, general manager of Boulder’s largest hotel, the Regal Harvest House, said a hotel built as part of a new convention center complex would be the headquarters hotel for conventions. So the question becomes, how would convention planners select additional hotels when needed?

A final feasibility and financial analysis report from a convention center study, initiated by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, will be completed near the end of March, according to Stan Zemler, president and executive director of the chamber. Around the third or fourth week in March, Zemler plans to schedule presentations by John Kaatz, principal at Conventions, Sports & Leisure International, the consultant company conducting the study.

Zemler said if the convention center steering committee elects to continue with a site analysis, more funding from the city, BURA and the chamber would be needed. The original $44,000 raised for the study has just about been spent on the market, economic and financial analysis, according to Zemler.

The feasibility of use results, reported in December, showed the size of the convention center needed for Boulder to be between 50,000 and 100,000 square feet. Results also showed that the center would be used 250 days a year. Estimated direct spending in the community from a convention center would be about $7.4 million, according to Zemler.

At the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, Rich Grant, director of communications, said that while it is impossible to generalize what hotels a convention planner may chose, they tend to use three criteria: accessibility, facilities and cost. “How badly a convention wants to go to a particular city also determines what it is willing to put up with,” he said. “The ideal is to have rooms right across from the convention area.”

Zollars said event planners tend to select hotels other than the headquarters hotels based upon their available space, rather than proximity to the convention center. “The ability of hotels to commit blocks of rooms is the major consideration,” Zollars said. “Some conventioneers, however, want to stay in a brand-name hotel like the Marriott no matter where the convention is because they get membership benefits.”

The Regal Harvest House, with 269 rooms, generally allocates no more than 75 percent of its space or about 200 rooms for meetings and groups. “The individual traveler is still our most valued customer,” Zollars said. “And that probably wouldn’t change with a new convention center.” The Regal Harvest House would be able to allocate a block of at least 175 rooms for a convention, he said.

Hotels build a clientele that consistently rents rooms throughout the year, according to Zollars. “Think of those customers as the peaks of the business,” he said. “Conventions, business meetings and groups are the valleys.” A convention center in Boulder would fill blocks of rooms on the “dark days” but still allow the Regal Harvest House ? soon to be renamed Millennium Hotel — to keep its mainstay business of individual travelers and small groups, Zollars said.

“Corporate conventions and university conferences drive room nights,” he said. “The convention center manager would want to plan conventions that result in three- to five-day stays in 600 to 700 sleeping rooms, rather than a regional exhibition that only attracts daytime visitors.”

Michelle Polsgrove, director of sales and catering for the Broker Inn, said a new convention center would help the Broker to sell out more often. “We would not lose our primary business of weddings and small business meetings,” she said. “So a convention center would have a positive effect and very little or no negative effect on us.”

Polsgrove thought Boulder would attract conventions such as hiking gear manufacturers and New Age-related conventioneers, what she called “Boulder-type conventions.”

“We would not be in direct competition with hotels on Highway 36 like the Omni,” she said. “Those large hotels attract large conventions, and they have large meeting rooms.”

The business philosophy of the Hotel Boulderado downtown is to fill both rooms and meeting space, not just rooms, said Mary Ann Mahoney, director of public relations for the hotel. “A convention center in Boulder might not have an effect on the Hotel Boulderado because we market our space to smaller business meetings. And we are loyal to local corporations,” she said.

A convention center with a hotel next to it, however, needs to be built for Boulder to have a sustainable economy, Mahoney said. “Marketing to larger groups the city can’t accommodate now would help us remain competitive. We would be in direct competition with the Omni and other hotels on the Denver/Boulder Corridor,” she said.

Mahoney indicated the Boulderado felt a slight decline in occupancy for about eight months when the Omni opened. The Boulderado would be able to allocate only 10 percent of its 160 rooms to a convention, she said.

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