Wall Street workroom: Benchmark Hospitality's new World Trade
Institute
Call it a quiet success story. While the
hospitality industry has mostly hunkered down to survive this long
period of travel-economy doldrums, small growth has come in the
conference center segment. According to a report compiled for the
International Association of Conference Centers by David Arnold and
Dana Ramus of the Philadelphia-based office of PKF Consulting,
these specialty meeting properties lately have been generating
higher revenues and operating income than hotels, both per
available room and per occupied room.
Meanwhile, a number of new IACC-certified centers opened in
2003, with more on the way for this year and the next. And as
economic woes ease, so might funding portals, allowing
long-discussed projects finally to go forth.
Member properties of the St. Louis-based IACC (www.iacconline.com)
must comply with a long list of requirements, called the Universal
Criteria, to be certified. These rules include strict
specifications for conference-room chairs, continuous breaks set
outside meeting rooms and the minimum amount of dining seats
required to meet the capacity of a facility for lunch in two
seatings.
These criteria took on more potency in January, when the
organization’s board moved to abolish the Universal Criteria’s
grandfather clause, which exempted current members from new
criteria that were put in place after they were accepted for
membership.
“Now, all members must undergo an independent inspection every
four years, and they must comply with the Universal Criteria that
are in effect at the time of the inspections,” says Tom Bolman,
CAE, executive vice president of IACC. The inspections are being
carried out by Fairfax, Va.-based Bare and Associates. One quarter
of IACC members will be looked at this year; over the next four
years, every property will be checked for compliance.
Following is a roundup of new centers available now or soon to
meeting planners worldwide.
Ancillary Centers: “We’re Worthy”
Geoff Lawson
The fastest-growing segment of the International Association of Conference Centers’ membership is the ancillary center, an IACC-approved meeting facility without sleeping rooms that is attached to a noncertified hotel or other venue.
Some members think ancillary centers dilute the IACC product and confuse the public; not so, says Geoff Lawson, current president of IACC North America and regional area director for conference center owners Dolce International. “These centers strengthen and reinforce the conference center concept,” he says. “There are criteria they need to meet, and they are branded under the IACC logo, adjacent to the accommodations. When you’re in an IACC center, you know it.”
Two ancillary centers were welcomed into IACC in January. The 7,250-square-foot Ortiz Executive Conference Center (361-879-0125;
www.portofcorpuschristi.com/OrtizCenter.html) is at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center in Corpus Christi, Texas. The 19,500-square-foot Conference Center Niagara Falls (
www.niagarafalls-cc.com) opens in mid-May in Niagara Falls, N.Y., as part of a 116,000-square-foot convention facility. - S.B.
2003
The Washington Mutual Leadership Center at
Cedarbrook (206-901-9268; www.cedarbrookcenter.com) in SeaTac, Wash., began
welcoming guests in January 2003. Seattle-based Columbia
Hospitality manages the 110-room property, which is used primarily
by Washington Mutual for its employee-learning events, but on days
the center is free, including most weekends, it is open to outside
groups. The center, which sits on 18 wooded acres, offers 30,000
square feet of meeting space and is five minutes from Sea-Tac
International Airport.
Gaithersburg, Md.-based Sodexho Conferencing opened the 123-room
Conference Center at NorthPointe (866-233-9393; www.conferencecenteratnorthpointe.com) in Columbus,
Ohio, in March 2003. The meeting facilities are set in a
villagelike atmosphere with cobblestone streets and have a total of
20,000 square feet of meeting space, including a 6,000-square-foot
ballroom.
Benchmark Hospitality, based in The Woodlands, Texas, opened two
day centers meeting facilities that have no sleeping rooms last
year, one in New York City and one in Tokyo. The World
Trade Institute Conference Center (212-346-1195; www.benchmarkhospitality.com) debuted in New York
City’s financial district last September. The center has 28 meeting
rooms for a total of 20,000 square feet of space, including a
2,000-square-foot multifunction room.
The Tokyo Conference Center Shinagawa
(011-81-3-3556-0023; www.benchmarkhospitality.com), in the
southeastern section of the city, began hosting meetings in July
2003. The facility offers a total of 18,632 square feet of meeting
space in 10 rooms.
Breakfast in bed: The Estancia La Jolla Hotel and Spa sits on a
former horse farm.
2004
Due to open June 1 is the Estancia La Jolla Hotel
& Spa (858-550-1000; www.estancialajolla.com), a Destination Hotels &
Resorts property in La Jolla, Calif. Formerly a horse farm, the
210-room Estancia will sit on 9.5 acres of land. Its conference
facilities, called the Learning Retreat, will total 25,000 square
feet of space, including a 6,000-square-foot ballroom and a
125-seat amphitheater. Through the windows, attendees will gaze on
open-air loggias, courtyards and gardens. The property will be
across the street from the University of California San Diego’s
Eleanor Roosevelt College and next to the Salk Institute.
Opening in July is Columbia Hospitality’s Bremerton
Harborside Kitsap Conference Center (360-377-3785; www.kitsapconferencecenter.com) in Bremerton, Wash.
Set on Puget Sound and about a 45-minute ferry ride from Seattle,
the center will include a 110-room Hampton Inn and a marina. The
conference facility will offer 10,000 square feet of meeting space,
including the 6,000-square-foot Puget Sound Ballroom.
Marriott International will unveil a conference center in its
backyard on Nov. 1: the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel &
Conference Center (301-984-0004; www.conferencecenters.com). Steps from a Washington,
D.C., Metro station, the property will have 223 guest rooms and
include a concierge level. The meeting space will total 35,537
square feet in 21 rooms, including a 23,303-square-foot
ballroom.
Taking an overseas detour, Montvale, N.J.-based Dolce
International is scheduled to begin operations at the Dolce
Sitges (011-34-811-33-94; sitges.dolce.com) in
Sitges, Spain, in October. Featuring dramatic views of the
Mediterranean Sea, the 260-room property offers golf, four pools
and a spa. Meetings will be held in the 23,411-square-foot
Conference Centre’s 34 rooms.
Now Open to the Public
Mike Fahner
Over the past several years, many corporations that have built conference centers for their workforces have found the facilities expensive to run and turned to outside management companies to handle the properties and market them to outside groups.
For instance, ARAMARK once managed the Xerox Document University in Lansdowne, Va. “We put in a business model to create an organization to sell the excess to the outside,” says Mike Fahner, vice president of sales and marketing for what is now Philadelphia-based ARAMARK Harrison Lodging. “That model has been copied with varying levels of success and today is kind of the norm. There are very few corporate centers we own that don’t do this mixed model any more.”
Fahner notes, however, that many corporations, colleges and universities are selling their conference centers altogether, getting out of the facility business while remaining the centers’ main customer. In fact, the 950-room Xerox property is now the National Conference Center (703-729-8000;
www.aramarkharrisonlodging.com), but Fahner says Xerox still books 40,000 room nights a year there.
Accepted into IACC as an ancillary center in January was McDonald’s Corp.’s Hamburger University in Oak Brook, Ill., which is now marketed to outside groups by Hyatt Hotels Corp. The 218-room Hyatt Lodge (630-990-2523;
www.thelodge.hyatt.com) next door handles bookings for the center. - S.B.
2005
In New Brunswick, N.J., the Heldrich Hotel and
Conference Center (www.benchmarkhospitality.com) is scheduled to begin
welcoming groups in spring 2005. Built by Benchmark Hospitality,
the property will have 248 guest rooms and 50,000 square feet of
meeting space in five large conference rooms and 10 breakout
rooms.
Also coming in spring 2005 is a full-blown resort in Utah with
an IACC-approved conference center. Built by Dolce International,
the Zermatt Resort & Spa (866-937-6288; www.zermattresort.com) in Midway, Utah, will have 250
rooms. Indoor and outdoor meeting and event space will total 64,000
square feet. Minutes away are the Wasatch Mountain ski destinations
of Deer Valley and Park City.
In the Mission Bay area of San Francisco, now undergoing various
urban-renewal projects, Philadelphia-based ARAMARK Harrison Lodging
is building the Mission Bay Conference Center (www.aramarkharrisonlodging.com), to open sometime in
2005. The day center, which will be owned by the University of
CaliforniaSan Francisco, will offer eight meeting rooms and 15,000
square feet of meeting space.
Reports from New York City-based Sentry Hospitality show the
River Winds Golf and Conference Resort (www.sentryhospitality.com) in West Deptford, N.J., is
still a go, with an opening scheduled for the end of 2005. A golf
course and a $30 million sports center already are up and running.
The resort will have 272 guest rooms, 40,000 square feet of meeting
space plus an 11,000-square-foot ballroom, a spa and a 150-slip
marina on the Delaware River.