Already making headlines more than a quarter of a century ago with the revitalization of its celebrated Inner Harbor, Baltimore continues its renewal momentum, carving out more areas with tourist appeal along its historic waterfront. Across the Chesapeake Bay, another world awaits groups choosing Maryland’s Eastern and Atlantic shores, home to quaint countryside and waterfront towns as well as inviting Ocean City.
Baltimore
New development completed, under way or planned in Maryland’s largest community since 2002 tops $11 billion, according to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA).
“We’re remaking a whole new city. Our challenge is to let people know how much Baltimore has changed and to fill more hotel rooms. We have so much inventory under construction,” says Tom Noonan, president and CEO of the BACVA.
Within the next few years, 2,200 more hotel rooms, most in the downtown core and harbor, are expected to come into the market.
Dubbed “Charm City” by promoters in the mid-’70s, Baltimore rebranded in 2006 with the slogan “Baltimore. Get in on it.” Today, BACVA’s convention advertising carries the tagline “In Baltimore, you’re two feet away from everything” below a picture of tennis shoes with city scenes superimposed on the soles.
“Everything delegates would want is within walking distance,” Noonan enthuses, mentioning the harbor, sports stadiums, restaurants, museums, and other attractions. “It’s a huge advantage for us.”
With the city’s compact layout, the festive Inner Harbor merges into City Center to the north, and the Baltimore Convention Center is flanked by Camden Yards, home of the MLB Orioles, and nearby is M&T Stadium, home of the NFL Ravens.
Among the city’s major restaurant, shopping and entertainment choices are the pavilions of Harborplace, the seed of rejuvenation unveiled in 1980, and the Power Plant complex. There are year-round harbor cruises, as well as attractive neighborhoods and Fort McHenry (of War of 1812 fame) just a water taxi ride away.
The Inner Harbor boasts the Baltimore National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center and the Baltimore Maritime Museum, which has historic vessels to tour.
The 1.2 million-square-foot Baltimore Convention Center offers 300,000 square feet of exhibit halls, 85,000 square feet of meeting rooms and a 36,000-square-foot ballroom.
The city has almost 7,000 hotel rooms, and a similar number are located on the outskirts.
The big news in town is the upcoming Hilton Baltimore Convention Center, scheduled to open Aug. 8 with 757 guest rooms and 62,000 square feet of meeting space. The property will be connected to the convention center by an enclosed, climate-controlled pedestrian walkway.
Also connected to the convention center are the Sheraton Inner Harbor, which underwent a multimillion-dollar enhancement last year, and the Hyatt Regency Baltimore, which recently completed a $20 million renovation.
Several other properties are also enhancing facilities. The Baltimore Wyndham was reflagged the Sheraton Baltimore City Center early last year and just finished a $30 million renovation; the Renaissance Harborplace is spending $15 million on upgrades; and the Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards is completing a $12 million makeover.
With more than 70,000 square feet of function space, the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, the town’s largest meetings hotel, is also undergoing a major renovation. Opened in 2001 on the Inner Harbor’s edge, it has been a catalyst for the redevelopment of a new area, Harbor East, which was full of abandoned warehouses a decade ago.
The revitalized area, extending east to the renewed historic Fell’s Point district, will unveil a 200-room Four Seasons property in 2010. A Hilton Garden Inn opened at Harbor East in December following the debut of an adjacent Homewood Suites in September. And an off-site meetings option added in November—the seven-screen Landmark Theatres Harbor East—has leather stadium-style seating and wine and crab cakes on the concession menu.
Aside from the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center, the city continues to be a magnet for other hotel developers, particularly boutique and new lifestyle brands. Some are conversions of existing City Center sites, aiding historic building revival.
SpringHill Suites Baltimore Downtown/Inner Harbor opened last November. A conversion of a historic office building, it features 99 suites and two meeting rooms totaling 950 square feet.
Additionally, a 135-room Hotel Indigo is scheduled to debut soon, and a 173-room Hyatt Place is slated to open later this year. Expected to open next year are a 153-room Four Points by Sheraton and a 154-room Fairfield Inn & Suites designed to be the city’s first LEED-certified hotel.
Among other properties planned are a 208-room Hotel Monaco and an Element, Starwood’s new extended-stay brand.
At Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), located 10 miles south of Baltimore, Starwood plans to open an Element property and an aloft hotel.
In spring 2007, ASHA Companies announced the $375 million Crosswinds Resort for a site two miles from the airport with a projected opening of late 2009. Plans include 1,200 guest rooms in four hotels (a Crowne Plaza, a Hotel Indigo, an extended-stay hotel, and the Crosswinds Hotel). The resort will also feature a 120,000-square-foot conference center, a waterpark, a spa, and entertainment venues.
Also in the BWI area, a Westin and Sheraton opened on adjacent sites last year, and a Hilton opened in October 2006.
Aside from the numerous meetings-capable hotels, planners can take advantage of dozens of unique off-site venue options in Baltimore, with the city’s impressive collection of museums and attractions accounting for many. The National Aquarium, for example, can host receptions for 2,500 patrons, the Maryland Science Center can accommodate up to 1,500 people, and the Baltimore Maritime Museum holds up to 170 guests.
Off-site venue options have increased with new museums debuting over the last three years, including the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture near the Inner Harbor, the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park at Fells Point and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum at Camden Yards.
Among the many other choices are the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Industry, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum.
Noonan says with Baltimore’s new offerings, the city is able to better compete for meetings and conventions business.
“We are competing with cities like Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and we have the smallest and oldest convention center in our competitive set,” he says.
For the last three fiscal years, BACVA’s bookings for future years have increased year over year. The 381,556 room nights sold in fiscal year 2007 were up 8 percent over the previous fiscal year, and this fiscal year, the pace is way ahead of the goal of 400,000 room nights, according to Noonan.
“We’ve increased the size of our sales team. We’re very competitive. And the new Hilton is really helping. We needed that bigger block,” he explains, adding that BACVA can commit 4,000 to 5,000 rooms, depending on the time of year.
In December, BACVA announced that the annual Pharmaceutical Meeting Planners Forum, which Philadelphia has hosted for the last three years, will be held in Baltimore for two consecutive years beginning in 2008, attracting 1,000 attendees.
BACVA, Noonan says, has been focusing on the pharma and medical meetings market, which traditionally books short-term and can fill in slow convention periods.
BACVA recently joined forces with the Fort Worth CVB and the Sacramento CVB in a unique partnership. The three share two sales executives, and a third will be appointed for the West. The new sales strategy is based on a national hotel model encouraging groups to sign multiyear contracts at properties throughout the country, often with an incentive for doing so.
“It’s still a work in progress. We’re hoping for multiyear contracts for the cities,” he says. “We’re still six months or more away from seeing how successful we are.”
Eastern and Atlantic Shores
At Annapolis, the 4.5-mile-long Chesapeake Bay Bridge leads travelers to a rural escape featuring 300 years of maritime history, small villages and farms, secluded coves and inlets, shorebirds, boating, and steamed crabs.
From the bridge, route 50 runs south through an area sprinkled with resort hotels, inns and meetings retreats, then across to Ocean City on Maryland’s Atlantic seaboard, a distance of around 100 miles.
Not far from the bridge in Queenstown, the 86-room, 1,100-acre Aspen Wye River Conference Centers has three retreats in one, with 7,400 square feet of conference space and team building that includes a certified Outward Bound course.
Farther south, Talbot County—“The Hamptons of the Chesapeake Bay”—is home to the communities of historic St. Michaels, Oxford, Tilghman Island, and Easton, the county seat. More than a dozen properties, a handful of brand-name hotels and the remainder mostly historic inns, offer meeting space, and for off-site events there are cruises.
Orient-Express Hotels’ 80-room Inn at Perry Cabin at St. Michaels, which unveiled a spa last summer, can take meeting groups of up to 100 people. Within walking distance is the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
The Harbourtowne Golf Resort and Conference Center, also in St. Michaels, serves up a Pete Dye golf course and 11,000 square feet of meeting space, and The Tidewater Inn at Easton, which has undergone an $8 million renovation, has more than 10,000 square feet of function space.
A Chesapeake Bay standout is 17 miles south of Easton at Cambridge. Here, the 342-acre, 425-room waterfront Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Golf Resort, Spa and Marina boasts 35,000 square feet of meeting space, including an 11,200-square-foot ballroom, an 18-hole championship course, a spa, a waterpark, a marina, and a wildlife refuge.
Inland, another 30 miles along route 50 is Salisbury, which has the Eastern Shore’s largest population and is the seat of Wicomico County.
The Wicomico Youth & Civic Center, the primary facility, has an arena with more than 30,000 square feet of column-free space and 12 meeting rooms.
According to Sandy Fulton, Wicomico County tourism manager, the civic center is being upgraded, a new Hampton Inn & Suites opens next year, and Salisbury’s 155-room Ramada Inn, the largest of a handful of hotels with meeting space, is undergoing renovations and will become a Holiday Inn later this year.
Meeting venues include the Fountains Wedding and Conference Center, which has a banquet capacity for 420 people, and the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, which can seat 70 for dinner.
Another 30 minutes drive and you are in Ocean City—11 miles of beaches, three miles of boardwalk, 10,000 hotel rooms and an additional 25,000 rental condos.
The 185,000-square-foot Roland E. Powell Convention Center has a 45,000-square-foot, column-free exhibit hall, a 22,000-square-foot ballroom, and 25 meeting rooms.
“Our primary focus is state and regional associations, and we get youth and religious groups. We’re a drive destination within seven hours of one-third of the U.S. population, and we frequently handle groups of 4,000 to 5,000 people,” says Fred Wise, director of sales and marketing for the Ocean City CVB and convention center.
Wise adds that Ocean City is fortunate to have so many annual groups, whose attendees tend to bring families, especially the second time, to enjoy the destination’s many diversions.
“Ocean City is the ‘White Marlin Capital of the World’—no one’s challenged that in 30 years,” he says. “We have 15 championship courses within a 20-minute drive, and even in winter it’s a desired place.”
Among its many meetings properties are the Clarion Resort Fontainebleau, the Princess Royale Oceanfront Hotel and Conference Center, and the Holiday Inn Oceanfront.
A 97-room Courtyard by Marriott is scheduled to open this fall.
For More Info
Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association 410.659.7300
www.baltimore.org
Ocean City CVB 410.289.8181
www.ococean.com
Talbot County Office of Tourism 410.770.8000
www.tourtalbot.org
Wicomico County CVB 410.548.4914
www.wicomicotourism.org
