Hotels Chip Away At Boston's Chronic Room Shortage
<B>Hotels Chip Away At Boston's Chronic Room Shortage</B>
By Robert Curley
While financing problems have slowed progress on some of Boston's highest-profile hotel projects, accommodations both large and small continue to pop up all over the city in response to a staggering demand for rooms.
Surveys by the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau show that lack of rooms tops the list of business travelers' biggest gripes about the city (transportation problems ranked second, followed closely by inadequate convention and meeting facilities). Boston's hotel occupancy rate continues to be about 78 percent--among the highest in the country.
Such projects as Starwood's $270 million, 1,120-room headquarters Sheraton hotel at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center have been hampered by financing woes, and funding problems also have slowed development of a planned 270-room Embassy Suites at Logan International Airport. Both projects are expected to be completed, however. Not so fortunate were the developers of the Hilton Cambridgeside Hotel in Cambridge, forced to abandon plans to build the 236-room hotel due to financing difficulties.
Despite such problems, 1,066 new hotel rooms opened in greater Boston in 2000, and another 1,328 rooms are expected to be added by year-end. The planned August 2001 opening of the new, 190-room Ritz-Carlton Boston Common should be welcome news to visitors accustomed to staying at the venerable Boston Ritz-Carlton on Arlington Street. The existing 73-year-old Ritz will be closed for extensive renovations in January 2002. The downside is that the loss of the 273-room property, even temporarily, only will exacerbate the city's room shortage.
The 268-room Doubletree Club Hotel Downtown Boston, which opened last June, added another sizable chunk of business traveler-friendly rooms. The new Doubletree is near the New England Medical Center and Chinatown and convenient to most of downtown. The other major hotel addition in downtown Boston is the 92-room Best Western RoundHouse Suites, which debuted in January.
Downtown Boston's Kenmore Square will be home to the planned four-star, 150-room Hotel Commonwealth, projected to debut in the Spring of 2002.
With 15,000 square feet of meeting space and a prominent location alongside the Southeast Expressway/Route 93, the 464-room Boston Marriott Quincy likely will become a magnet for business travelers when it opens in May.
Already open in nearby Braintree is a 103-room Hampton Inn, and the midprice chain promises another 114-room property will be open in Cambridge by spring of 2002.
Following in the footsteps of the upscale XV Beacon boutique hotel, which opened just steps from the Boston Common early last year, a number of smaller luxury hotels are looking to compete for business travelers who might otherwise stay at the Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton or Boston Harbor Hotel. The Beacon Hill Hotel & Bistro, for instance, opened in December 2000 and offers 14 guest rooms with high-speed Internet access in an 1830s brick townhouse at 25 Charles Street. Nearby is the Charles Street Inn, an eight-suite inn housed in a classic Beacon Hill Victorian townhouse. The Charles Street Inn also mixes antique furnishings with such modern amenities as DSL Internet, whirlpool tubs and cable TV with VCRs.