N.Y. Sheraton To Open High-Tech Conference Facility

The Sheraton New York and Towers is building a full-service conference center with videoconferencing capability, scheduled to open in September .

The 30,000-square-foot facility will offer 12 meeting rooms, a 22-seat executive boardroom and expansive public spaces for networking and impromptu work sessions. Public spaces will have telephone and Internet-access kiosks where people can plug in laptops.

All meeting rooms will offer landline videoconferencing and an ISDN telecommunications management system. Sophisticated controls will enable "climate individualized" rooms, and an Egan Visual Tracking system will be available for presentations.

The center, which will have its own support staff separate from the hotel's, will be sold on a "one-stop shop" basis for simplified booking. The facility also will offer one-stop checkin: Conference attendees will be able to check in to the hotel and the conference at the same time.

"We really are a separate facility that happens to be housed in a hotel, although there will be synergies with the property," said Michelle Mitterer, the center's director. The facility will be sold at a CMP rate, she noted.

The hotel is demolishing street-level exhibit space to make way for the center. Furnishings will include modular tables, ergonomic chairs and, as a nod to the rigors faced by the planning community, three offices dedicated to them so they can handle work-related matters while juggling on-site duties.

The project fits in with the Sheraton New York Hotel and Tower's repositioning as a corporate property, a strategy it implemented in 1992. To continue that strategy, the hotel is reconfiguring its elevator banks to have dedicated elevators for the three floors of corporate club rooms.

In converting an exhibit space that wasn't as large as its competitors', Sheraton also will address the dearth of adequate conference facilities in the midtown Manhattan area. In Manhattan, as in other large urban centers, demand for such facilities--whether or not sleeping rooms are involved--appears to be outpacing supply.

Sheraton is the second hotel company in recent months to announce the conversion of existing space into a dedicated meetings facility to address that gap: Swissôtel New York will open its conference facility in May and is considering using it as a prototype for its other properties (Meetings Today, Feb. 24).

"We know there's a big need for a conference center that can handle serious meetings while still offering access to hotel amenities," Mitterer said.

During its planning for the center, Sheraton conducted focus group research among corporate buyers.

"These people are experienced planners and we value their opinions," Mitterer said. "I think that's reflected in the facility's user-friendly design. Planners have told us again and again that an environment need not be sterile to be effective, so we decided to give them stately furnishings, vaulted ceilings and lights that mimic outdoor lighting."

Corporate buyers also took issue with a lack of closet space in meeting rooms, which typically results in a luggage pileup that rivals that of the average airplane interior during boarding. As a result, the conference facility will have extra-large closets.