After years of controversy, false starts, missed deadlines, and extra taxes, the local powers-that-be are discussing yet another approach to the hotel component of the Wilmington convention center project: ditching the notion of a full-service hotel. The Greater Wilmington Business Journal has the story:

“Six years ago when the community started this process, it was important that we recruit a full-service hotel,” said Wilmington CVB President and CEO Kim Hufham. “With all that has changed since then, between the economy and trends in the industry, we think that a limited-service hotel may need to be considered as a possible option going forward.”

Hufham and John Sneed, a new sales manager with the CVB specifically dedicated to selling meeting space in the area, agree that the deficit in service between a limited service hotel and a full-service hotel could be made up with surrounding restaurants or new restaurants to come.

“The line between limited service and full is more blurred than it used to be,” Sneed said. “If the hotel is smart, they can team up with a local restaurant and boom, room service is right there.”

However, hospitality analysts say a limited service hotel might be a gamble. Often the hotel adjoining a convention center will serve ancillary events as part of a larger convention. So more catering would be needed for a banquet of several hundred separate from the main convention event of several thousand.

“That would concern me more if the only food and beverage opportunity is catered in the convention center, because most restaurants can’t handle large groups,” said East Carolina University hospitality management professor George Fenich, who researches convention centers.

Years ago, JLF tapped the expertise of someone else who researches convention centers, the Brookings Institution’s Heywood Sanders. His message was that the potential payoffs of municipal investment in convention centers were not likely to offset the costs. The Wilmington project would be no different, we argued.

Then, in 2006 JLF Research Director Michael Sanera analyzed the Wilmington project as part of a paper on the (rickety) economics of convention centers. The outlook wasn’t good:

Interest in new convention center space is based on a myth, Sanera said. City staff and outside consultants promise that a new or improved convention center will generate new business. They also support funding schemes that target visitors – including taxes on hotel rooms, rental cars, or prepared food and beverages.

“It is crucial to the economic well-being of North Carolina’s cities and counties that its local officials see past this myth,” Sanera said. “Despite a hopeful first glance, convention centers are never a ’something for nothing’ proposition.”

The mythology lives on.

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