Today’s news, that Houston is looking into how to get a second convention hotel downtown, is just stunning:
The city is considering plans to bring a second convention center hotel to downtown, in an effort to take Houston one step closer to becoming a top convention destination.
Officials involved said Houston gets scratched off the lists of a lot of convention planners because it has a limited number of downtown hotel rooms.
“The current convention center hotel is filling up, and Houston can attract more conventions if it had more hotel rooms in the Central Business District, and specifically, close to the George R. Brown Convention Center,” Mayor Bill White said Monday.
The plan is in its early stages, with input being collected from groups that include the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city’s Convention & Entertainment Facilities Department and the Houston Convention Center Hotel Corp.
“We’re trying to figure out what it would cost and how it would get financed,” said Richard Campo, board chairman of the hotel corporation.
[snip]
Downtown hotel occupancy was 66.1 percent through November of last year. It was down slightly because 2007 was not a strong convention year, said Keeling of PKF Consulting.
The Hilton Americas has been performing well, Campo said. But for a new hotel, the ideal scenario would be for a private developer to build it.
The mayor said there are “significant pools” of private capital available that did not exist when the Hilton Americas was financed.
Greg Ortale, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Chronicle on Monday that some type of public support would be needed.
Houston hasn’t learned a thing.
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