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New Bedford’s level of activity justifies hotel
Study sees a vacancy downtown
By Aaron Nicodemus, Standard-Times staff writer
NEW BEDFORD — A professional marketing study has
concluded there is a demand for an 80- to 100-bed hotel
in downtown New Bedford.
The report, funded by the New Bedford Economic
Development Council, concluded the city's corporations
and tourism industry could support an 80-room "boutique"
hotel or a 100-room "franchise-affiliated" hotel. Rooms
should be priced in the range of $100 to $110, the
report said, which would make the hotel competitive with
hotels in the region.
Demand for hotel rooms in downtown is seasonal, the
report concluded, with demand highest from April to
September and lowest from November through February. The
report projected that either a boutique hotel or a
franchise hotel could expect two-thirds of its rooms to
be occupied, on average.
By examining the eight hotels that hold the market now,
the authors of the report concluded that the top
performers are the Residence Inn in Dartmouth and the
two Hampton Inns, one in Westport and one in Fairhaven.
The report suggested modeling the proposed downtown
hotel on those business plans.
The report was compiled by The Pinnacle Advisory Group,
a professional, hotel consulting firm in Boston. After
sending surveys to more than 200 companies and tourist
attractions in the area, Pinnacle received 41 responses,
and based its conclusion largely on the opinions stated
in those surveys.
"Based on responses from tourist and commercial demand
generators, a site downtown, and in particular the
historic district, would be the most appropriate for the
development of a hotel," the report said. "The location
downtown would allow a hotel property to capitalize on
the many commercial office buildings, tourism
attractions and the accessibility to the city's
waterfront."
Mayor Scott W. Lang said the report was commissioned
after several developers contacted the city, looking for
data to bolster the case for a hotel downtown. He said
the report is the first step towards bringing a
mid-sized hotel downtown.
"My gut feeling is the city could support a modestly
sized hotel to start with, with some amount of
conference or meeting space," he said.
The development could involve the renovation of an
existing building, new construction or some combination
of rehabilitation and new construction. It would all
depend on the private developers interested in the
project, he said.
"The report laid out for me that it is possible. Now
let's see what happens," he said.
The city now has one hotel, the Days Inn on Hathaway
Road. The Holiday Inn Express in Fairhaven is the
closest to the city's downtown. The former New Bedford
Hotel, located downtown, was converted into apartments
years ago.
The city has tried to bring a hotel downtown for years,
and almost succeeded in 2004, when a developer was
poised to turn the former New Bedford Institution for
Savings building on Union Street into a boutique hotel.
That plan never materialized.
Contact Aaron Nicodemus at
anicodemus@s-t.com
Date of Publication: November 23, 2006 on Page A15 |
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