At a time when consumers cut spending and $4-a-gallon gasoline causes people to pull back on traveling, new downtown Baltimore hotels present significant competitive challenges to existing city hotels.
“[New development] puts a lot of pressure on existing hotels if demand isn?t there,” Dan Nadeau, general manager of the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, said Thursday at a Commercial Real Estate Women-Baltimore event to discuss the state of the city?s hotel industry.
Downtown Baltimore?s hotel market continues to expand, good news overall for the city and economic development.
The concern for hotel managers is whether there is enough demand ? tourists, businesses and conventions ? to fill the city and region?s new hotel rooms during shaky economic times.
“The rest of the year … could be a real struggle for everybody,” said Ben Timashenka, general manager of the Westin BWI Airport Hotel.
There are six hotels under construction in downtown Baltimore.
Those hotels, including the $301 million, 757-room Hilton Baltimore Convention Center, will add about 1,500 rooms to the existing downtown supply of 6,400 hotel rooms.
Additionally, there are 14 hotel projects in the planning phase for downtown Baltimore that would add another 1,800 rooms.
“Interest in hotels downtown isn?t slowing down yet,” said Bob Aydukovic, vice president of economic development for Downtown Partnership.
“[Hotel development in Baltimore is] still certainly on people?s minds.”
City and state tourism and visitor initiatives have done a good job promoting Baltimore as a vacation destination, with leisure visitors making up the bulk of business for Baltimore hotels, Nadeau said.
The opening of the Hilton in August should increase convention activity in the city, Aydukovic said.
New hotels, including the $600 million mixed-use project in Harbor East that will include a Four Seasons with 200 rooms, creates competition among existing hotels, but in the end generates outside interest in Baltimore, Nadeau said.
“In the long term, [new hotels] are good for the city,” Nadeau added.
Thursday?s event was held, not surprisingly, at Pier 5 Hotel in Inner Harbor.
