Affordable Mtg. Venues Are The Apple Of Planners' Eyes
<B> Affordable Mtg. Venues Are The Apple Of Planners' Eyes</B>
By Frank Rosci
With New York's meeting scene as varied and vibrant as it is, a particular segment--affordable meeting venues--continues to enhance, define and solidify its position and appeal as a practical option for ever-increasing numbers of companies and groups.
"Throughout the city, meeting venues--including those considered affordable--are upgrading and enhancing their space and facilities to tap into the current boom of meetings, related, in part, to the city's strong economy, with its expanding businesses and fast-growing commerce which, in turn, create the need to hold more meetings, more often," said a spokesman for the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau. "It's another example of the public/private renaissance sweeping New York," he said.
Leading the charge at the affordable level is a group of New York hotels known as Apple Core--the Quality Hotel & Suites Midtown, the Comfort Inn Midtown, the Best Western Manhattan and the Quality Hotel East Side--which offer recently refurbished meeting space, complete with high-tech audiovisual equipment and business centers to meet the demands of business travelers and meeting planners, said Vijay Dandapani, COO of Apple Core Hotels.
Another Apple Core property, the Best Western Hotel & Conference Center, just 15 minutes from New York JFK Airport, has seven versatile meeting rooms that range in size from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet, with a 16,000-sq.-ft. grand ballroom that accommodates groups with up to 2,000 attendees.
"Apple Core began in the early '90s with a traditional heads and beds philosophy, but also with a sense that meetings were going to become a more important activity and source of revenue," Dandapani said. With that in mind, the company included business and fitness centers and meeting rooms as part of the master plan, always placing these spaces in the easily accessible lower levels of the buildings. Now that there is a strong hotel market all over New York, Apple Core is positioned to accommodate small groups in search of good space and savings. "Our facilities are well-equipped, affordably priced and tailored to the needs of meetings from 75 to 80 people, up to a maximum of 100," he added. Meeting room rates range from $300 to $1,500 per day.
A key factor that has allowed Apple Core to keep its rates low is that it has relied on a strategy of reworking and modernizing existing hotels, rather than building new ones at what would be prohibitive costs in today's market. The company has transformed four aging Manhattan hotels in the past three years.
The 193-room Quality Hotel & Suites Midtown, close to Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center, has a pair of meeting rooms--the Wentworth Room, accommodating up to 80 theater-style, and the Patterson Room, a 15-person board room--as well as a business center on the lower level. As at all the Manhattan Apple Core properties, the business center is equipped with an online computer (Internet access is 30 cents per minute), a fax machine, photocopier and ATM machine.
Meanwhile, the 80-room Comfort Inn Midtown, the former Hotel Remington, recently was renovated at a cost of $1.5 million. It accommodates up to 30 attendees and is equipped with audiovisual capabilities. Just a block from the Empire State Building, the 178-room Best Western Manhattan can accommodate up to 65 people for meetings in the Empire Room, while the 100-room Quality Hotel East Side--a short walk from Midtown--offers a conference room that can accommodate up to 60 people.
Other moderately priced meeting venues in the city include the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue, across from Penn Station. The 1,705-room property is in a prime location in Midtown and offers 18 meeting rooms, ranging in size from the 360-sq.-ft. Albany Room to the 7,740-sq.-ft. Penntop Ballroom. Meeting rooms accommodate from 10 to 800 attendees, depending on how the space is configured.
The Skyline, with 221 rooms and 10 suites, is another hotel with a mid-Manhattan locale that offers moderately priced meetings. Its meeting and function space accommodates from 25 to 250 persons theater-style.
As well, the New Yorker Hotel, with 1,000 rooms and 40 suites, has 18 meeting and banquet rooms for planners looking for a value-priced venue.
To assist planners in meeting their meeting goals with greater convenience and cost efficiency, the CVB spokesman recommended "holding meetings in January, February and March--first-quarter winter months that traditionally mark the city's slower times--and select days of the week--days other than the extremely busy Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday cycle. These are two very good ways planners can maximize their meeting budgets.