As Occupancy Begins To Slip, Airport Hotels Look To Mtgs.

<B> As Occupancy Begins To Slip, Airport Hotels Look To Mtgs.</B>

By Chris Davis

The spread of same-day air service to more and more city pairs has cut the number of business travelers staying overnight--and made airport hotels more dependent than ever on corporate meetings business, hospitality analysts said. At the same time, airport hotels are rolling out new construction, technological upgrades, renovations and meetings programs to appeal to and serve the corporate group market.

"Corporate meetings will become more of a critical base for airport hotels," predicted hospitality industry analyst Ted Mandigo of Elmhurst, Ill.-based T.R. Mandigo & Co. "Given the expansion of air travel, there are more direct routes in and out of hub airports, and more and better connections available. People don't have to stay overnight as much as they have in the past."

For the corporate buyer, airport hotels still offer their traditional selling points: low-cost and quick transportation, and the efficient use of attendees' time. The new programs and services being added will only make the product more attractive.

Holiday Inn, for example, is building a prototype airport hotel in Atlanta, scheduled to open in December, that will feature 194 guestrooms and 3,500 square feet of meeting space, said John Tarantini, vice president of operations for Holiday Inn's corporately managed and operated hotels.

The prototype will feature technological enhancements--including Internet access in meeting rooms, switchboard-free phone service to guestrooms and the ability to use a credit card as a room key--that other brands are likely to adopt.

"Typically our hotels don't have this sort of technology," Tarantini said. "The technology also is meant to reduce some redundant tasks employees are spending time on, so they can spend more time servicing the client."

Radisson Hotels Worldwide has installed "better electrical support in guest and meeting rooms, including built-in data lines in both, so people can plug computers into ports in meeting rooms and download presentations," in some airport properties, said vice president of management services Dave Hartvigsen. In addition, Radisson, which opened new airport properties in Chicago in February and New York last fall, is establishing one-stop shopping with a single point of contact for planners, so that the employee who answers the initial call also handles the meeting. That's important, he said, since about 80 percent of Radisson airport meetings involve less than 45 days of lead time.

Such moves are likely to lead to continued growth of the corporate meetings market for airport hotels, said Don Massagli, director of hospitality consulting for the Chicago branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Airport properties are a market segment that seems to do well in down times and strong times, and is well-positioned to fight the cycles of the market. Most properties that are aggressive in the market--providing meeting space, transportation to and from the property and videoconferencing capability--will do well."

One airport hotel doing well with corporate meetings is the Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport. With 59 meeting rooms, every month it hosts 800 to 1,000 meetings, 75 percent of which are corporate. Many of them are single-day and half-day events that do not entail overnight stays. "Being located in the airport, we have a lot of people who fly in and fly out on the same day, and we often get calls for meetings to be held today or tomorrow," said director of sales Marian Fuller.

Still, she recommended that planners consider the traditionally slow days of the week if they are trying to put together single-day events with less than two weeks of lead time.

"We have to balance the needs of our customers against our own needs," Fuller said. "I have to make sure I'm selling the entire hotel. We're more likely to book these meetings on a Friday or a weekend, when demand isn't as strong, than on a Tuesday or Wednesday, when I'll sell out. Once the meeting rooms are all booked, we go with a two-week cutoff date."

But not every airport hotel has the flexibility to offer meeting space without a room night component. "It's all based on space availability," said John Lavin, vice president of national sales for Promus Hotel Corp. "Hotels in general would rather not take that kind of business, from the standpoint that meeting rooms are there to sell sleeping rooms. My suggestion to meeting planners is to find out if the hotel is sold out. If so, they may be able to get a meeting room without sleeping rooms. If a sold-out hotel could use the additional room-rental revenue, they'll do it."

With the nature of corporate meetings being very short term--a recent Meetings Today survey found that about 95 percent of airport meetings are planned with less than 90 days lead time (<I>Meetings Today,</I> March 22)--the most likely time a busy airport hotel would know whether it can handle a meeting without sleeping rooms is only a day or two before.

"Requests for five-hour meetings and the like at airport hotels are very prevalent," said Susan Hodapp, brand director for Marriott Hotels, Resorts and Suites. "Meeting rooms at these properties are typically sold more than once a day, and the optimum is to sell them three times a day--once in the morning, afternoon and evening. Twice is still wonderful."

Every day, Hodapp said, the hotel "looks at a demand picture and has to put that puzzle together to realize bottom line. We must evaluate the entire mix of demand--meetings and individual--and put those pieces together. All business is great, but the key is how you put it together each day to maximize the facility's profit and still serve the market well.