About This Convention Business Business…

All this convention hotel talk is giving me serious déjà vu. I can’t help but remember a feature I wrote for the print product way back in 2003. (It’s easier to remember, since it was the last feature of considerable length that I had the stamina to write.) The story “Topless Bars and Bottom Lines” (catchy title, that) was about the confluence of bad tidings that hampered our Convention and Visitor Business. Notable among them was the debate over a convention hotel. Five years ago, the same arguments were made, albeit by different people. The relevant passage is after the jump.

From about midway in the story:

“It seems to me an anchor convention-center hotel would provide undeniable synergy that would benefit all of the hotels and motels in Dallas,” says State Rep. Steve Wolens, who has authored a bill that would help finance a hotel in municipalities such as Dallas. The bill has been referred to committee, Wolens has asked for a hearing, and he is hopeful that it will pass next month.

Critics of a new hotel worry about taxpayers’ footing the bill for another private venture, but former CVB president Dave Whitney doesn’t see an alternative. “In the last 15 years, there hasn’t been a convention-center hotel built in America without public subsidy—maybe with one exception, and that would be Las Vegas,” he says. “That doesn’t mean writing a check. It could be a tax abatement. It could be shared revenues. It could be all kinds of different things.”

Hoteliers in particular aren’t swayed by the argument that a convention-center hotel is a cure-all. They feel that one more option for out-of-towners is going to dilute the already-bare market. “The hotel community’s position is ‘downtown first, a hotel will follow,’” says Steve Vissotzky, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Dallas and chairman of the Hotel/Motel Association of Greater Dallas.

Or vice versa.