While luxury hotels are seeing signs of recovery, these are still not the best of times for properties under development or making their debut. For major meetings destinations around the West, there is a mixed bag of new hotel openings as well as stalled developments struggling to obtain financing.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Las Vegas. While MGM Mirage beat the odds by opening three luxury hotels, including a Mandarin Oriental, in its $7 billion CityCenter complex in December, other big projects remain on hold.
Among them is Boyd Gaming’s Echelon Place, a complex with several luxury hotels that was to have opened this year on the Las Vegas Strip. Construction halted in August 2008. In November, Boyd Gaming announced that construction may not resume again until 2012.
Another delayed project is Fontainebleau Las Vegas, a 63-story tower on the north end of the Strip, which went into bankruptcy last year after $2 billion worth of construction had already taken place. In January, the unfinished property was scooped up by financier Carl Icahn for $150 million—just pennies on the dollar. Future plans for the development have not yet been announced.
The recent announcement from Ritz-Carlton that The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Las Vegas is closing its doors May 2 because of lack of funding from its owners is another sign of the troubled financial environment. Meanwhile, The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage, a $500 redevelopment project in Rancho Mirage, Calif., has been on hold since 2008.
By contrast, several new luxury properties are making their scheduled debuts in Los Angeles this year. A JW Marriott hotel recently opened in a blue-tinted, 54-story tower at the LA Live complex adjacent to the Los Angeles Convention Center. A Ritz-Carlton is set to open in April in the same building. Another high-profile newcomer is the W Hollywood, which opened in February at the fabled intersection of Hollywood and Vine.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts recently unveiled the Fairmont Pacific Rim, a 377-room luxury property adjacent to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre.
