City tourism up 14 percent from 2010
With event bookings on the upswing, hotels and restaurants on streets surrounding the David L. Lawrence Convention Center are enjoying a bump in sales.
Tourism organization VisitPittsburgh said on Wednesday that it booked 538 meetings and conventions last year for 2011 and later years at various Downtown venues. That's up 14 percent from the 472 events put on its schedule for the region in 2010, leaders said at the nonprofit's annual meeting in the Senator John Heinz History Center.
For the convention center alone, VisitPittsburgh booked 49 events covering 202 days, including the One Young World global youth leadership summit set for Oct. 18-22. Last year's summit in Zurich drew 1,200 people from 170 countries. Some events are held elsewhere, such as Consol Energy Center and area hotels.
Convention center bookings are up from 33 the previous year, representing 205 days. The region's hotel occupancy rate rose to 68.1 percent, from 66.2 percent and 61.8 percent in the two prior years.
"Pittsburgh is really peaking right now," said Craig Davis, who became VisitPittsburgh's CEO yesterday. "We're in the national news. We're getting accolade after accolade. We're becoming in many ways a focus city for conventions.
"It's easy to get here. We have a great hotel product, fantastic restaurants and our convention center is one of the best, if not the best midsize convention center" in the United States, Davis said. The 538 bookings represent an estimated $229 million in spending, including visitors buying souvenirs and dining in local restaurants.
VisitPittsburgh searches nationwide for meetings, then refers interested customers to hotels that handle bookings based on their availability. Last year's hotel occupancy rate was the city's highest going back 21 years, Davis said, and it beat the national average of 60 percent.
Tom Martini, general manager of the Westin Convention Center Hotel, said 2011 was the hotel's best year since 2001. He credits much of the increase to Pittsburgh's escaping the worst of the recession and to the worldwide attention that the G-20 summit brought to the city in 2009.
"That's when people said, 'We've got to see what Pittsburgh is about,' " he said.
Hotel rooms near the convention center have increased in number from 2,500 a decade ago to about 4,000 now, Martini said. Room nights sold in the Downtown area went up by 10,000 last year, about a 10 percent increase. A similar increase is expected this year, he said.
The Marcellus shale natural gas production industry has hosted several conferences at the convention center, local businesses noted, and some of the biggest boosts last year were the National Rifle Association convention and the Anthrocon gathering of people who identify with animals and may dress up and act like them.
This week's Marcellus Midstream Conference at the center meant busy lunch hours, said Mark Sampson, general manager of the Sharp Edge Bistro on Penn Avenue.
"The restaurant business Downtown is bipolar. You never know what you're going to get and when you'll get it," Sampson said.
Mark Ondrey, manager of Tonic Bar and Grill on Liberty Avenue, said his staff is hard-pressed to keep up with crowds on convention days, especially at lunch. The restaurant has seating for nearly 100.
"It's almost too much, but we try to do our best," Ondrey said.
VisitPittsburgh said yesterday that a new Welcome Pittsburgh Information Center and Gift Shop at Fifth Avenue Place generated $35,000 in merchandise sales, up 218 percent from the previous year. The former shop was at Gateway Center.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_787673.html
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