In destinations along the 1,700-mile Gulf of Mexico, a mixed bag of development has brought an unprecedented range of new and improved choices for meetings, with much more to come in the months ahead.
For the most part, this stems from the unprecedented hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, which necessitated the rebuilding and renovation of properties in many areas. Katrina in August and Rita in September of 2005, and Charley on Florida’s west coast in August 2004, were the primary instigators.
New Orleans is back in the market big time. Billions of dollars in new casino resort investment is headed for the rebounding Mississippi Gulf Coast. Upscale resorts throughout the region are renovating and expanding to remain competitive.
Historic hotels, long shuttered and now restored, are transforming the convention center cores of cities such as Mobile, Ala., and Baton Rouge, La. Others, such as Tampa and Sarasota, Fla., are benefiting with new downtown hotel rooms.
On top of this, manic condo development, including some condo-hotels, is well under way in such diverse beach playgrounds as Galveston, Texas, and Panama City, Fla. And the explosion in limited-service hotels has now reached Corpus Christi and Port Arthur, Texas.
TEXAS
Corpus Christi
Texas’ largest coastal city, Corpus Christi, which has a deep-sea port and an international airport, attracts 5 million visitors a year.
Major meetings hotels include the Omni Bayfront Hotel with 28,000 square feet of meeting space; the Ramada Bayfront with 16,000 square feet; and the Holiday Inn Emerald Beach and Holiday Inn Padre Island Drive, each with 11,000 square feet.
The city’s meetings capability was boosted a little over two years ago with the remodeling of its waterfront convention venue, the AmericanBank Center, which has 75,000 square feet of exhibit space, and the addition of an adjacent 10,000-seat arena. Then in April 2005 the nearby Whataburger Field opened for minor league baseball.
“We get state associations, lots of SMERF business and religious groups. We’ve added sales staff and have sports events as a new focus,” says Kimberly Lemley, vice president of tourism marketing for the Corpus Christi CVB.
She adds that 14 limited-service hotels with a total of 1,000 rooms are expected to open this year, most of them concentrated off the I-37 and South Padre Drive areas, which will bring the city’s room count to more than 10,000.
Galveston
Galveston, less than an hour from Houston, draws 7 million visitors annually to its historic downtown, port and 32 miles of beach.
In May, the city’s 140,000-square-foot beachfront Galveston Island Convention Center will be three years old. Part of the 28-acre San Luis Resort, there are three adjacent hotels with 700 rooms and a separate 40,000-square-foot IACC-certified conference center.
“Meeting planners find it easy to bring large groups to Galveston Island because of the technology and ambience this first-class convention center offers. We have been very successful in attracting national corporate and national association meetings,” says Meg Winchester, director of sales at the Galveston Island CVB.
The city also boasts the 428-room Moody Gardens Hotel Spa & Convention Center, with 100,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space.
Among other meeting properties are the Hotel Galvez, with 14,000 square feet of meeting space, and the Tremont House, with 13,500 square feet. Both are Wyndham Historic Hotels.
The Victorian Hotel & Conference Center, which has 10,000 square feet of meeting space, became the Hawthorn Suites Galveston at The Victorian Resort & Conference Center following a renovation last spring.
The island’s newest attraction, the 26-acre, year-round Schlitterbahn Waterpark, opened next to Moody Gardens last spring. With a retractable roof, it is billed as the world’s first indoor-outdoor convertible water park.
According to Paula Brown, the CVB’s public relations manager, $2.3 billion in restoration and economic development is taking place on the island, including condo projects.
A Baymont Inn and Suites with meeting space opened last July.
Beaumont
Less than two hours from Houston on I-10, Beaumont has two standalone convention facilities, the 3-year-old Ford Park, which includes an arena, concert venue and 48,000 square feet of exhibit space, and the 42,000-square-foot Beaumont Civic Center, located on the historic downtown waterfront.
Its two convention hotels completed major renovations last year after suffering damage from Rita. They are the 253-room Holiday Inn, which has 22,000 square feet of meeting space and reopened last spring, and the 284-room MCM Elegante, which has 17,000 square feet of meeting space and never closed.
Port Arthur
The coastal city of Port Arthur, less than 20 miles south of Beaumont, was directly in Rita’s path.
Its civic center, which has a 20,000-square-foot main hall, is undergoing $2.5 million in repairs. It is expected to reopen in May or June.
Meanwhile, larger groups are using a Lamar State College facility, which can seat 700, according to Tammy Kotzur, executive director of the Port Arthur CVB.
The city has more than 20 hotels, with the largest, the Holiday Inn Port Arthur, able to handle groups of up to 300.
An Econo Lodge opened recently, and together with seven other new limited-service hotels slated to open by fall, will add 600 rooms to the current room inventory of 1,100.
“With an expected expansion of oil refineries over the next three to five years, we need them,” Kotzur says.
LOUISIANA
Lake Charles
An hour east of Beaumont on I-10 is Lake Charles, where casinos inflate the meetings and event options.
“We get state associations and social groups, and the sports market is huge for us, but casinos are our biggest attraction,” says Tico Soto, director of sales for the Southwest Louisiana CVB, which promotes Lake Charles and Calcasieu Parish.
There is a downtown civic center with 62,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, while a handful of hotels in the parish have substantial meeting space.
The city also has two waterfront casino hotels: Pinnacle Entertainment’s 745-room L’Auberge du Lac Hotel and Casino, which opened in May 2005, and the 400-room Isle of Capri. Nearby Vinton has the Delta Downs Racetrack and Casino, which added function space and a 203-room hotel less than two years ago.
With golf, a riverboat casino and 28,000 square feet of meeting space, L’Auberge has opened up new corporate and association markets for the city. Late this year, it will open a tower addition, bringing its total room count to almost 1,000.
In addition, Pinnacle expects to begin construction in September on a second casino resort adjacent to L’Auberge, the $350 million Caribbean-themed Sugar Cane Bay, set for completion in 2009.
The project came about after Harrah’s Entertainment, its two Lake Charles casino boats destroyed by Rita, sold its gaming assets to Pinnacle (including its 263-room hotel, which reopened minus casinos as the Lake Front Hotel early last year). Voters approved Sugar Cane in the November elections.
Pinnacle plans to use the second gaming license acquired from Harrah’s to build a casino resort in Baton Rouge.
Soto says L’Auberge has made a big difference.
“It has really helped the area,” he says, but adds that “room availability is still not where we would like it to be” because parts of the parish are still recovering from Rita and that construction crews still fill many of the parish’s 4,000 rooms.
Baton Rouge
In Baton Rouge, the state capital, the big news for planners is the Aug. 30 opening of the 293-room Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center.
With 18,000 square feet of meeting space, the hotel is a $70 million transformation of the old Heidelberg Hotel and Capitol House Hotel, which was built in 1927 and had been closed since 1982.
The Hilton is just two blocks from the Baton Rouge River Center, the second hotel within walking distance of the city’s primary convention venue.
“We now have a complete meetings package for a true convention center,” says Renee Areng, Baton Rouge Area CVB vice president of sales.
The River Center, offering 200,000 square feet of space, was more than doubled in size a little more than two years ago. Adjacent is the 300-room Sheraton Baton Rouge.
The city also saw the opening of the 69,000-square-foot Louisiana State Museum a year ago and the $55 million Shaw Center for the Arts, in 2005, both of which have event space.
New Orleans
It’s 80 miles on I-10 from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Going through the swamps, looking out over the central business district, and driving down to the French Quarter, there is scarcely any evidence of a catastrophic hurricane. The amount of construction appears normal. It’s the same scenario traveling east on I-10 from the city. Devastated areas are elsewhere.
After the Katrina devastation, the Big Easy declared it would be open for tourists on Jan. 1, 2006. A year of milestones followed as the city rebounded.
In November, the Morial Convention Center, fully open and restored at a cost of $60 million, hosted 24,000 attendees at the National Association of Realtors’ convention. It opened partially a year ago, holding its first citywide post-Katrina convention in June.
The Louisiana Superdome reopened in September; the nearby New Orleans Arena last March. Major tourist attractions and cultural institutions are open.
Last month, the Morial hosted MPI’s 2007 Professional Education Conference–North America, with an approximate attendance of 2,500.
The New Orleans Metropolitan CVB reports that it retained 40 percent of meetings and conventions business for 2006, 70 percent for 2007 and over 90 percent for 2008, and short-term corporate meetings bookings are on the rise. Of the sprawling metro area’s 38,000 pre-Katrina hotel rooms, more than 30,000 are available.
One of the last major holdouts, The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans, reopened Dec. 4 after more than $100 million in renovations, with the Maison Orleans, formerly a hotel-within-a-hotel, transformed into its club level wing. The Fairmont remains closed.
The Hyatt is undergoing an extensive renovation with an expected late-2007 opening. The project is part of a new $700 million public-private development, the Hyatt Regency National Jazz Park & Municipal Complex.
The $170 million Harrah’s New Orleans Hotel, the first new city hotel to open since Katrina, debuted in September. The 26-story, 450-room hotel is adjacent to its 2,100-slot casino.
Pinnacle Entertainment expects to start work this quarter on a $145 million expansion of its Boomtown New Orleans casino, with completion targeted for the second half of 2008. The project includes a 200-room upscale hotel, additional meeting space and a new riverboat gaming complex.
“We’re doing much better than we had expected. We’ve had lots of support, and the corporate meetings market has been a tremendous segment for us,” says Jeff Anders, the CVB’s director of convention marketing.
However, there are challenges.
“We’re still suffering from the fallout of the national media coverage, he says. “A perception that the city is still broken still exists.”
He explains that in one recent informal planner survey, one respondent said that because of what he had read, he regarded the city as “not operable.” Also, a recent caller asked Anders if he had to wear special shoes because of “toxic ground.”
MISSISSIPPI
Eighty miles west of the Crescent City off I-10, the hurricane-ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast continues its own dramatic recovery, with a boost coming from new casino developers anxious to build.
The whole of Beach Boulevard, which is the destination’s core from the Gulfport waterfront through Biloxi and accounts for about half the destination’s 26 miles of beach, is open.
The bulk of meeting space along the Mississippi Gulf Coast is in casino hotels. Pre-Katrina, it had 12 casinos; now it has 10.
According to the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB, 9,800 of the destination’s 17,340 pre-Katrina rooms have opened, up from around 6,300 in early 2006.
“If meeting planners come here they are surprised at how much we have recovered,” says Steve Richer, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB. “We’re optimistic. Casinos are doing real well. There is lots of investment coming and a whole new destination down the road.”
The primary meetings hotels are the 1,740-room Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, which has 50,000 square feet of meeting space, and the 1,088-room IP Hotel and Casino (formerly the Imperial Palace), which has 18,000 square feet. The IP, along with the Palace Casino Resort and the Isle of Capri Casino Resort, reopened in time for New Year’s 2006.
On Aug. 29, Katrina’s one-year anniversary, the Beau Rivage Resort reopened following a $750 million makeover that included a redesigned casino and new restaurants, the last three of which opened in December. Its new Tom Fazio-designed Fallen Oak Golf Course opened in November.
Richer explains that with riverboat casinos destroyed, many casinos moved gaming into their hotels, reducing their meeting and event space.
Previously, gaming was restricted to riverboats. However, state legislation allowing onshore casinos has opened the floodgates to new casino resort proposals.
Richer points out that with new and expansion casino projects, the Gulf could have 25,000 to 30,000 new hotel rooms by 2010.
Biloxi’s Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center, formerly under contract to FEMA, reopened Jan. 1. Its 10,000-seat arena reopened last June.
Plans are under way to begin work on its pre-Katrina-planned $68 million expansion, which will add more than 200,000 square feet to the facility’s existing 180,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space. An opening is targeted for late 2008 or early 2009.
Pre-Katrina, two new casinos, the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and Silver Slipper Casino, were under construction. Hard Rock will open July 7; Silver Slipper opened in November as a land-based facility.
Other casinos that are open are Treasure Bay, which is about to reopen its 251-room hotel; Boomtown Casino; the 291-room Hollywood Casino Bay St. Louis, formerly Casino Magic; the 500-room Grand Biloxi Casino Hotel & Spa; and the 562-room Island View Casino Resort, formerly Grand Casino Gulfport.
Two new condo-hotels have opened, Sea Breeze in Biloxi and Villas of Legacy in Gulfport, and a few others are under construction.
Among proposed mega projects are the $500 million Bacaran Bay Casino Resort; The Broadwater, a $1 billion resort that will include a Foxwoods casino; Landry’s, with a Golden Nugget casino; Isle of Capri, with a $250 million-plus development near I-10; and Trump and Diamondhead Casino Corp., with a casino complex at Bay St. Louis.
ALABAMA
Mobile
Mobile, the state’s third-largest city and 60 miles from Biloxi, is nearing completion of upscale meetings-friendly improvements around its primary venue, the 317,000-square-foot Arthur R. Outlaw Convention Center, located along the downtown waterfront.
“It’s become easier to sell, and we’re now selling to regional and national groups. I think we have the best meetings package of any Gulf Coast mid-size city,” says Leon Maisel, Mobile Bay CVB president and CEO.
The 375-room Riverview Plaza Hotel, connected to the convention center, is nearing completion of a $32 million renovation that includes its 32,000 square feet of meeting space. A block away, the RSA Battle House Hotel opens in May.
Closed for 30 years and once Mobile’s top hotel, the Battle House is being restored as part of a $165 million project that includes the construction of the 39-story RSA Tower. About half the 238 rooms will be in the historic Battle House; half in the new tower. The 40,000 square feet of meeting space will include the hotel’s original Crystal Ballroom.
When work is completed, both hotels will take on Marriott’s Renaissance brand.
With the Battle House opening there will be 1,200 rooms within walking distance of the convention center.
Maisel says that with more upscale accommodations “doors have opened.” And doors have also been opened, he says, because of Carnival’s Mobile-based Holiday, which began cruises in October 2004. The ship hosted Katrina survivors for six months, and has enabled the bureau to promote pre- and post-convention cruises.
Also expected to give Mobile a boost is the proposed 3,000-acre Alabama Motorsports Park, a Dale Earnhardt Jr. Speedway with four racing venues, retail shopping, hotels, entertainment venues, and restaurants. With an expected September groundbreaking, racing is projected to start in fall 2009, with full operations in 2010.
Alabama’s Gulf Coast
Eighty miles southeast of Mobile, Alabama’s Gulf Coast begins. Encompassing the cities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, it has 13,000 hotel and condo units and more than 30 miles of white-sand beach.
The 347-room Peridido Beach Resort, which has 42,000 square feet of meeting space, is the largest of the half-dozen meeting-equipped properties.
Hurricane Ivan struck, but almost all Alabama Gulf Coast accommodations were back by late 2005.
Beth Gendler, sales director for the Alabama Gulf Coast CVB, describes 2006 as “a great recovery year.”
“With new projects under way that include meeting and event space, we’ll be a different destination in a few years,” she says.
Two major projects are under development on opposite sides of Orange Beach’s Intercoastal Waterway.
At the Bama Bayou Resort & Convention Center, formerly called Riverwalk, construction is under way on the first phase, which includes Gulf World water park and the first condos. Plans call for 650 condo units, shopping and a 68,000-square-foot convention facility.
The Wharf opened in phases last year between Memorial Day and July 4. It features shopping, a half-mile-long boardwalk, a marina, a 10,200-seat amphitheater, a Ferris wheel, and a 15-screen cinema. Once completed, the 220-acre project will have 1 million square feet of retail and other commercial space, 1,600 condo units and a 125-room hotel.
Gendler says a number of condos are under construction, including the 300-unit Phoenix West, slated to open late this year, with 12,000 square feet of meeting space.
FLORIDA
Pensacola
An hour east from Mississippi’s Gulf Coast is Pensacola, home of naval aviation, white-sand beaches, a protected national shoreline, and what the Pensacola Area CVB says are “incredible” room rates from mid-August through March.
Downtown’s only Ivan casualty was the Crowne Plaza Pensacola Grand, adjacent to the Pensacola Civic Center, which has 20,000-square feet of function space. With 7,584 square feet of meeting space, it reopened in November after a two-year renovation.
Also downtown, a new 120-room Courtyard by Marriot opens in March less than one mile from the civic center.
At Pensacola Beach, the Hilton Garden Inn will take on the Hilton brand this spring with the opening of an additional 94 suites and 7,000 square feet of meeting space. The project is the first phase of a $500 million, 700-room beachfront development.
Emerald Coast
To the east, the communities of Destin, Fort Walton Beach and Okaloosa Island, which comprise 24 miles of Okaloosa County’s Emerald Coast, are also doing well.
Darrel Jones, CMP, the Emerald Coast CVB’s executive director, says for the first nine months of last year the area’s hotel occupancy was up 2 percent and lodging taxes were up as well.
“We’re mainly a drive market. We have a good mix of group business, and it’s been strong,” he says.
The destination, which has 18,000 countywide guest rooms, lost around 750 rooms to Ivan that are not being rebuilt. A dozen hotels offering 12,000 rooms in the beach area also have meeting space, including the largest, the 335-room Ramada Plaza Beach Resort with 14,000 square feet.
Farther east is Intrawest Corp.’s Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. With 72 holes of golf, 65,000 square feet of meeting space and seven miles of beach, it is part of the 26-mile coast and 13 communities promoted by the Beaches of South Walton CVB.
Last spring it unveiled its newest condominium, the 243-suite Luau, bringing its total accommodation units to 1,700.
Just outside the resort, the first phase of brand-name stores and restaurants of the 50-acre, $200 million Grand Boulevard at Sandestin opens this spring. Two hotels opened there early last year: the 175-room Courtyard Sandestin with 2,000 square feet of meeting space, and a 125-room Residence Inn.
Sandestin is home also to the separately managed 600-room Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa, with 32,000 square feet of meeting space. The property has a $3.4 million room redesign renovation under way. Extensive 2006 renovations transformed meeting facilities and dining outlets.
Panama City Beach
Farther east, Panama City Beach, with 27 miles of sand, completed a $23.5 million beach renourishment project last spring.
It has been undergoing a condo building boom: Panama City Beach CVB reported 13 new properties opening last spring alone, bringing its total number of accommodation units to 25,000.
Meetings properties are renovating and expanding. Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort recently unveiled its three-story, 4,000-square-foot SeaWatch Conference & Entertainment Center, and Edgewater Beach Resort is slated to open a 20,000-square-foot meeting pavilion in August.
The largest meetings property, the 355-room Bay Point Marriott Resort, with 40,000 square feet of function space, has a new Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course and a new 12,000-square-foot spa.
Tampa/St. Petersburg
Tampa, west coast Florida’s largest metro area, boasts the waterfront 650,000-square-foot Tampa Convention Center.
Last fall, the 360-suite Embassy Suites Tampa–Downtown opened. Connected to the center by a covered bridge, it has 9,000 square feet of meeting space.
“With the addition of the hotel, and recent or scheduled renovations of every other hotel making up the downtown core of convention center hotels, Tampa’s convention package is stronger,” says Alex Kaptzan, Tampa Bay CVB’s director of convention sales.
The opening of the Embassy Suites gives a total of more than 2,100 guest rooms in five properties within a four-block radius of the convention center. Another 4,000 rooms are within four miles.
Adjacent to the center is the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina; a block away is the Westin Tampa Harbour Island (formerly a Wyndham); and four blocks away are the Sheraton Tampa Riverwalk and the Hyatt Regency Tampa.
Sheraton Tampa Riverwalk unveiled a new 5,000-square-foot ballroom last spring, the final project in a renovation of the former Radisson.
Across the bay, St. Petersburg’s Gateway business area in June welcomed the new 227-room Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park, with 20,000 square feet of meeting space.
Punta Gorda/Charlotte Harbor
It’s been two-and-a-half-years since Hurricane Charley pushed through Punta Gorda and Charlotte Harbor, sparing the beaches and most of the rest of Charlotte County.
“In a few years we’ll be able to market more to meetings. We’ll have a very different destination,” says Becky Bovell, director of the Charlotte Harbor & Gulf Islands VB, which promotes the county.
The largest meeting hotel, the 141-room Best Western Waterfront, handling groups of up to 400, reopened in November 2005 following renovations. Design work is under way on the proposed Harbor Inn Resort on the site of the nearby Holiday Inn Harborside, which was destroyed.
Work could start this spring on a yearlong project to build the proposed Charlotte Harbor Events Center, which will replace the smaller Memorial Auditorium all but destroyed by Charley.
In late 2005 the county opened the “tentatorium,” on the auditorium site, a temporary multipurpose structure that can seat 1,800 and features 16,000 square feet of open space.
“I hope we can find another site for it and keep it until the events center opens,” Bovell says.
Meanwhile, Microtel, Sleep Inn, and La Quinta hotels currently under construction are expected to open this year.
Fort Myers
Fort Myers, less than 30 minutes away, is marketed by the Lee County VCB as the Beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel.
Work began in December on the 62-room Hotel Indigo Fort Myers–Historic River District, the area’s first new hotel in 20 years.
“We have been fortunate. We had a good 2006. Our European market was good, our Florida market was especially good, and our new airport is awesome,” says Mark Crabb, the Lee County VCB’s deputy director.
Last May, the 330-acre South Seas Island Resort on Captiva Island held its grand reopening following a $140 million facelift. It was the last of a trio of major resorts that suffered Charley damage to open.
September saw the grand opening of the 150-suite Embassy Suites Hotel-Fort Myers/Estero, with 4,500 square feet of meeting space near the airport.
Also, work is expected to start late this year on the first phase of a long-awaited expansion of the primary convention facility, the downtown Fort Myers’ Harborside Event Center, which has 42,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space. The first phase, targeted to open in early 2009, features additional breakout rooms.
Naples
Naples, another 30 miles south, offers 20 miles of beaches marketed by the Greater Naples, Marco Island and Everglades CVB.
The destination gets a new resort in September with the opening of the Naples Bay Resort close to downtown. The Benchmark Hospitality-managed property will feature 140 hotel and condo-hotel units, plus resort cottages and residential townhouses, a marina, a tennis center, and 5,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
Marco Island Marriott Resort, Golf Club & Spa completed a $150 million facelift last month that included renovations of its rooms and 60,000 square feet of meeting space, plus new shopping and dining, remodeled lobby and a new pool.
Last year The Ritz-Carlton, Naples completed a $22 million renovation and unveiled its $4.5 million, two-story Naples Beach House, with 3,000-square feet of meeting space.
