Hotel vacancy rates rise

[steven]

County-wide hotel occupancy fell 4.5 percent in October, according to statistics released by Smith Travel Research Inc. of Nashville. Tourism officials explained the drop - 71.2 percent in October 2004 to 68 percent this year - by saying that fewer meetings took place.

Meetings and conventions are routinely booked by the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau, which cut its sales staff by one-third last year in the wake of the Erie County budget crisis.

Because of advance bookings - made in some instances three years ago - the county still has a healthy hotel occupancy rate. For the first 10 months of 2005, Erie County hotel occupancy ran 3.4 percent ahead of 2004's pace. In hard numbers, the room occupancy rate went from 61.6 percent through the first 10 months of 2004 to 63.7 percent for the same period this year.

"November and December both look like they will be solid months," said Richard Geiger, CVB president. Totals from those months are not yet available.

Niagara Falls, according to the Smith numbers, saw its hotel occupancy rate increase 4.6 percent to 52.3 percent in October.

For the year-to-date, occupancy in Niagara Falls rose 3.4 percent to 49.1 percent.

The national hotel occupancy average rose just slightly in October, going from 65.6 percent last year to 66.2 percent this year

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/s...ml?jst=b_ln_hl

[steven]

Calling it a "correction to a mistake," the Erie County Legislature re-allocated $450,000 in funding to the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau that it had sliced from the 2006 budget.

The CVB, already reeling from county budget cuts totaling more than $1.5 million last year, faced having its operations all but shuttered if the money had not been restored.

Lawmakers, in November, cut the money to help balance the 2006 budget but they promised tourism officials to find a way to restore the money once 2005 passed.

By shuffling funds from other accounts, the legislature Thursday afternoon, restored the $450,000. The motion was unanimously approved.

"This corrects a mistake that was made last year," said Legislator Demone Smith, D-Buffalo. "I want to apologize to the CVB for the error."

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/s...ml?jst=b_ln_hl



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and the beat goes on

[Achbek1]

Because of advance bookings - made in some instances three years ago - the county still has a healthy hotel occupancy rate.

Kind of like why the Main Place Mall still has SOME stores left. Because they signed ten year leases ten years ago not knowing that downtown would fall apart more and more each year.