Great news for hotels

I am excited by this.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...text|FRONTPAGE

This is great news; a huge increase in convention bookings is a big shot in the arm for the economy. Seems as though the increase in the number of rooms, combined with the Cobo renovations, is paying off.

600 additional room by 2015??? How big is the Aloft? Are they counting on planned projects or the rooms out in Novi at the Suburban Collection? Planned ain't the same as built! I always assumed that Aloft would have replaced the rooms lost by the transfer of the Milner to an apartment complex. Granted the replacement rooms will be much nicer!

Great news, can't wait for the Aloft David Whitney Hotel opening too. With other hotel plans downtown, including possible "Hudson site and Red Wings Arena development", I still want to see a Hyatt Hotel downtown. We will have 4 new hotels by 2017 on top of what we have now.

Why can't residential development come as fast to the downtown area?

There are some interesting conferences coming to Cobo:
2014 National Main Streets Conference
21st World Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems
2015 American Society of Association Executives

The last one will be critical. Pulling off a great convention for the NSAE means a greater likelihood of their members bringing their association conferences to Detroit.

While the growth is great, these are still very small numbers and there is a long way to go. 300,00 rooms is basically two-thirds occupancy of the Marriott Ren Cen for one year.

I know anecdotally [[from hotel friends) that the number of "weekender" trips downtown has skyrocketed in the last couple of years. By weekender, I mean people from within a few hours of Detroit spending one or two nights downtown, visiting restaurants, casinos, or seeing a show. That is hard to get specific stats on, but is also very important and encouraging. Detroit's hotels are now generally quite nice [[yes, the Hilton Garden Inn and St. Regis and a few others are just serviceable, but the Casinos, Book-Cadillac, Ft. Shelby, the Pontch- from what I've heard- and soon the Marriott are excellent). I think recreational hotel visits downtown will continue to grow, in addition to these business bookings.

I can add that from basic conversational encounters over the bar at Grand Trunk alone, the number of folks coming in for their first time for the weekend is through-the-roof...just from that sample alone. It has been fun meeting this positive energy. Another of the increases downtown, heh, along with the number of potential new hirees for another Gilbert venture. Luckily, my same street parking hidden gems remain undiscovered. Visitors largely use lots.