Unsurprisingly, an expert hired by Astrodome Redevelopment Corp. has reported that a convention center hotel (in a bad part of town with no real amenities or desirable features beyond a couple dozen sporting events per year) would generate MILLIONS for the city and have an occupancy rate even higher than Houston hotels in desirable parts of the city.
For some reason, the Houston Chronicle reports this as news:
A convention hotel at the Reliant Astrodome could net nearly $50 million annually four years after opening, a consultant said in a report released by Harris County Friday.
“Reliant Park is transforming into one of the largest, most versatile sports, entertainment and conversion complexes in the United States,” hotel consultant John Keeling, vice president of PKF Consulting, wrote. “To our knowledge, there are no other hotels like the proposed (hotel) adjacent to” a major stadium and convention center.
Astrodome Redevelopment Co., which has proposed reinventing the Dome as a convention hotel, hired PKF to do the study last year.
[snip]
PKF estimated that the Dome hotel would have a 72 percent occupancy rate in its third year.
Downtown Houston cannot currently fill its hotels, despite a top-notch convention center, two sports/entertainment venues that are open far more than two dozen times per year, downtown commerce, and other amenities. It therefore boggles the mind that any objective analyst would therefore conclude that Houston needs another convention center hotel in an undesirable part of town (seriously, is Houston’s South Loop on anyone’s destination list on dates that do not involve the Texans, Rodeo, or soccer?).
Of course Astrodome Redevelopment’s analyst came down exactly where one would expect. Why anyone would pay much attention to his sales job (let alone call it news) is another question altogether.
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