Tourism: Lack of ‘Headquarter Hotels’
Worries Some Locally
As crews wash new windows, nurture young landscaping and clean up the last remnants of construction, the San Diego Convention Center continues to prepare for the grand opening of its $216 million expansion next month.
There will be several events, including a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 14, a gala event that night and public access to the center for the next two days.
In many ways, the festivities will mark the physical debut of San Diego’s ability to bring in larger and more profitable convention and meetings groups.
The expansion nearly doubled the size of the convention center, adding 902,590 square feet and bringing the center’s total square footage to 2,618,190 square feet.
Last month, the San Diego Comic-Con used part of the center’s new area during the annual convention and trade show.
So did the San Diego Church of Christ when they convened here Aug. 9-10. The event overlapped the set-up of an incoming group’s user conference and training meeting.
Hotels Are Key
Bringing in larger convention groups and having the space to have these groups overlap their stays and generate far more money has long been a motivation for the expansion.
However, an ever-present concern has been the lack of convenient hotel facilities in the areas closest to the center.
Carol Wallace, president and CEO of the Convention Center Corp., said bookings have been successful and continue to go well , based in part on San Diego’s other draws as a leisure destination.
As of Aug. 2, a total of 239 events have been signed to use the expanded center.
But Wallace also said the potential for even more business continues to fall by the wayside without ideal hotel facilities nearby.
The term most often used is “headquarter hotel,” Wallace noted. The definition varies, she said, but it generally means the hotel has at least 1,000 rooms, a large allotment of suites, extensive meeting space and amenities geared toward corporate travelers, such as Internet access and 24-hour business centers.
According to the Convention Center Corp., between May 2000 and April 2001, 21 potential conventions and trade shows had seriously inquired about bringing their events to San Diego.
The groups, which could have generated more than $109 million in direct spending, could not be pursued because of the lack of hotel rooms.
In San Diego, only the Marriott Hotel & Marina currently qualifies as a headquarter hotel. It has 1,354 rooms and more than 100,000 feet of meeting space.
Earlier this summer, the 875-room Hyatt Regency San Diego broke ground on an expansion that would also qualify the property as a headquarter hotel.
The project includes 750 new rooms and will give the hotel 120,000 feet of meeting space. It’s planned to be completed by the summer of 2003.
The bayfront Campbell Shipyard project is also expected to become a headquarter hotel. The project was recently let go by locally based Manchester Resorts, and the San Diego Unified Port District currently plans seek qualified developers.
Stiff Competition
Until those hotels open, San Diego’s competition on the West Coast , including convention centers in San Francisco and Anaheim , will sell their packages with special emphasis on nearby facilities.
“From a hotel perspective, yes, we definitely use that as a selling advantage,” said Mark Theis, vice president of the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau’s convention division.
San Francisco’s Moscone Center has 442,000 square feet of exhibit space and a 300,000-square-foot expansion in the works. Post expansion, San Diego has 615,701 square feet of exhibit space. However, Moscone has more than 6,000 rooms available to conventioneers within walking distance, Theis said.
From what Theis has seen, the talk about San Diego’s expansion has been positive.
“San Diego’s known for a fantastic facility and clearly a desirable destination,” he said. “The only advantage, if you will, that San Francisco does have is a heavier concentration of hotels in a compact area that, candidly, San Diego lacks in that regard.”
Meeting planners react well to convenient hotel options, Theis said.
Shuttling can be a logistical nuisance and an extra expense, he explained.
“It obviously strengthens the planners’ package to have it all so tight and compact, for people to just run back and forth to the hotels, not have to get in and off buses, and just have that type of flexibility,” he said.
