It’s the Charlotte Convention Center. Again.
In a story out today, but not yet online, the Charlotte Business Journal relates that advance convention bookings are running well below projections — some 80 percent off. Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority honcho Tim Newman wants local hotels to step up with big room discounts to get the conventional biz hopping, but the hotel folks understandably don’t like that idea.
Local hospitality big-wig, Mohammad Jenatian, further suggests that Charlotte try to stay away from “the religious conventions and others that are dead set on Monday thru Thursday.” Now that’s funny.
Two of the three biggest conventions in Charlotte for 2005 were religious — the Mennonite Church USA and the National Baptist Sunday School & Baptist Training Union. The latter drew an estimated 12,500 per day for June 14-18; the former an estimated 10,000 per day from July 4-9.
Several more religious events were among the top 25 events for the year, just as is the case every year for Charlotte. What’s more, such religious events were among the few large events that actually drew out-of-town, overnight attendence. Events like the Easy Rider Bike Show, the Mid-Atlantic Boat Show, and car shows draw locals down for a gawk and do not fill hotel rooms.
In sum, Charlotte’s “hospitality industry” continues to live in some parallel universe where tourists jet off to Charlotte for the weekend, rent cars, rent rooms, and generally spend their savings. This delusion would be positively hysterical were it not driving so many bad public policy decisions — light rail, the Arena, the NASCAR Hall, the Wachovia Arts Complex, a possible tax-exempt minor league baseball stadium Uptown, on and on.
And now we have new answer to the basic question: “Do we want Charlotte to be a great place to live or a great place to visit?”
“Visit,” comes the Uptown refrain, “And only if you can come for the weekend.”
