Airport Hotels Set Sights On St. Louis Meetings Market

Several hotels close to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport are working hard to position themselves as both a complement and an alternative to the city's downtown hotels.

In fact, these hotels--the Henry VIII Hotel and Conference Center, three holiday Inns, a Radisson, Embassy Suites, Marriott, Hilton and a Renaissance, are even discussing the construction of their own convention and exhibition facility in the next few years.

With debate brewing over whether St. Louis has too few hotel rooms for the amount of convention space (BTN, Dec. 16, 1996), airport hoteliers want planners to take advantage of their rooms when considering the St. Louis lodging mix; the extra rooms would bring the region's total capacity to 6,000 rooms.

The airport hotels want to draw corporate and association meeting delegates and individual business travelers with lower prices, easy rapid transit downtown and attractions in their own right.

Jay Dearing, vice president of sales for Henry VIII Hotel and Conference Center, is a leader in the formation of the new Northwest/Airport Visitors Commission that is putting together a promotional piece to be sent to planners trumpeting the virtues of staying in St. Louis' Northwest Communities, which make up nine suburbs near the airport.

"We have as many rooms as downtown and as much hotel meeting space," said Dearing. "We also have free parking at all our properties, excellent rail service downtown on the new MetroLink and rates that average $20-$30 less a night."

The area also boasts the largest shopping mall in the area and a new riverboat casino coming this spring.

The new commission is being formed in conjunction with the Northwest Communities Chamber of Commerce "as an alternative to going downtown," said Dearing. The hotelier said he and his colleagues believe the city's convention and visitors bureau "has a downtown focus and we wanted to both provide an alternative to downtown and to expand options for people."

Mike Orlando, an official with the St. Louis Numismatic Association who helps arrange a trade show every year, said that staying as well as meeting near the airport is "simply more convenient."

The show, which attracts over 100 exhibitors and several thousand attendees, brings in participants from around the country, said Orlando.

St. Louis, meanwhile, has been trying unsuccessfully for years to attract a major convention hotel.

In the last three years, the city has added hundreds of thousands of square feet of meeting space in the form of an expansion that included the only certified conference center within a convention center--the Executive Conference Center--and a 70,000-seat arena--Trans World Dome--that doubles as both a sports and exhibition/meeting venue.

For now, the Northwest/Airport Visitors Commission is ready and willing to offer lodging space.

"We can provide more than just overflow space," said Dearing. "We can actually double the committable block for conventions out here."

He said that all airport hotels are within five minutes' free shuttle ride to the airport, from which travelers can take MetroLink downtown for just $1 a ride. In addition, major conventions could avail themselves of coach service to the convention center downtown with the cost of that service rebated to attendees on a per-room per-night basis.