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B&Bs Attract Corporate
Clients
By Monique Cole
In Boulder County bed and breakfast inns are fighting a David
& Goliath battle against large chain hotels. But for the
most part they are winning by offering personalized service,
a homey environment, and business friendly amenities.
"Overall occupancy rates in Boulder
have been declining since 1995," says Brian Nilsson, executive
director of the Boulder Hotel and Motel Association. "Rates
were declining at about 2 to 3 percent per year, but in the first
quarter of this year there was a 5.5 percent decline." He
added that annual average occupancy rates for hotels, motels
and lodges, and bed & breakfasts were about the same, around
65 percent.
"I think it's because of increasing
competition in our sector, Boulder and Louisville," Nilsson
added. "But I believe the tourism tax also had an effect."
Many hotel and inn managers are blaming the declining occupancy
rates on the defeat of the statewide tourism tax in 1993. The
.2 percent sales tax raised about $13 million per year that went
to promoting travel throughout the state.
The declining numbers are not keeping
developers away, however. The recently opened Marriott Hotel
on Canyon Boulevard and 28th Street added 150 rooms to Boulder's
lodging numbers. And new properties have been proposed in Gunbarrel,
in the new Crossroads Mall, at Iris and Foothills Parkway and
at 9th and Canyon. "Traditionally Boulder has had higher
occupancy numbers and higher daily rates and I think developers
saw that and thought that Boulder was a great place to build,"
Nilsson explained. "If occupancy rates are going down and
daily rates are staying the same, I'm afraid we're reaching the
building maximum."
Last year, a 5.5 percent room tax on
all lodging properties within Boulder raised $2.4 million dollars
for the city's general fund and the Boulder Convention and Visitors
Bureau. Within the city of Boulder, average nightly room rates
of bed & breakfasts were comparable to hotels, $108-$164
versus $103-$178, but significantly lower than lodges and motels,
$66-$111. Only one bed & breakfast in Boulder had room rates
starting below $93 per night, the larger 30-room Sandy Point
Inn in Gunbarrel. The Alps Boulder Canyon Inn competes with the
Hotel Boulderado for luxury suites costing upwards of $230 per
night.
Most bed & breakfasts have a smaller
number of rooms than hotels, around six to 12, said Nilsson.
And although they usually don't provide the swimming pools, large
meeting rooms, and restaurants that hotels do, guests enjoy the
personalized care provided by resident owners or managers, the
solitude and special ambiance, and of course the home-cooked
breakfasts. "There's always been a market for bed &
breakfasts," Nilsson says. "It's a growing segment,
but the entire tourism industry is growing."
Historically B&Bs have been known
for their romantic ambiance attracting honeymooners and other
vacationing couples. While the romance market continues to be
a big one, B&Bs, especially in Boulder County are increasingly
turning to the traveling executive market.
"The more people are away from
home, the more they want to get away from the sterile atmosphere
of a hotel," said Kate Beeman, owner of the Pearl Street
Inn in downtown Boulder. "I often see businessmen with their
laptops sitting in our courtyard out back." The inn offers
business-friendly services like telephone lines in each room,
a private conference room that holds 30 people, and access to
a fax machine and computer printer.
Beeman also attracts a large number
of wedding receptions thanks to a beautiful courtyard, full commercial
kitchen, and a liquor license. And the inn opens to the public
each Sunday for brunch. Marrying her past experience as a registered
nurse, she is finalizing an arrangement with cosmetic surgeon
Dr. Hans Kuisle, to care for his post-operative patients while
they recover at the inn. "You have to get creative,"
she says about creating new niches.
About half of her current business she
attributes to the inn's web site which went on-line last May.
She also runs advertisements in the Daily Camera and in travel
books published by various bed & breakfast organizations.
"Marketing is expensive, I just pick and choose," Beeman
said. "Anything is an improvement -- the previous owners
did no marketing."
Having owned the Pearl Street Inn for
a little over a year, Beeman says she has put most of her profits
back into the property, repainting, purchasing new linens, and
generally sprucing up the place. The nine-room inn, part of which
was built in 1898, has been used as a bed & breakfast since
1985. Beeman said the majority of her operating expenses go to
taxes and payroll for a full-time housekeeper, three part-time
innkeepers, and an events coordinator. "I barely get by
by the skin of my teeth in the off-season," she said.
"I've seen a decrease in occupancy
over the last year," Beeman said. 'We're running at about
75 percent year-round and 90 percent in June, July, and August
-- I'd like to see that year-round."
There are nine bed & breakfast inns
in Boulder (including two in Gunbarrel), one in the mountains
outside of Boulder, one in Longmont, two in Lyons and one in
Eldora. The B&Bs in Lyons and Eldora are too remote to attract
a large number of business clients and tend to focus on tourists.
Both the Inn at Rock 'n River and the Benam Bed & Breakfast
are located west of Lyons off of Highway 36, a well traveled
route to Rocky Mountain National Park, the state's most visited
attraction.
The Goldminer Hotel in the historic
town of Eldora offers free shuttles to the nearby ski resort
and to the gambling towns of Black Hawk and Central City. Originally
built in 1897 to accommodate miners on their way to Caribou and
other mines, the Goldminer has consistently served as a hotel
or bed and breakfast ever since.
Louisville will see its first bed &
breakfast inn by the fall of 1999 if all goes as planned for
Michael Hirsch, a Boulder developer. The property at 625 Main
Street in Louisville's historic downtown was first presented
to Hirsch as a possible office building with a storefront downstairs.
But he had other ideas. "It was too far off the beaten path
(for a retail store)," he explained. "The B&B idea
jumped right out at me."
"Every developer has his crystal
ball," he added. "With the entrance of all these chain
motels, I saw there would be a need for two things in the town:
a nice quaint place to stay and a venue for small weddings and
business conferences."
In less than three years, Louisville
went from having no hotels to having 422 rooms at four properties
-- the Marriott Courtyard, Hampton Inn, La Quinta Inn, and Comfort
Inn. "They exceeded anticipated occupancies," said
Paul Wood, Louisville's Planning Director. This would explain
plans for two additional hotels, a Quality Inn which has already
been approved and a new Marriott Residence Inn, catering to extended
stay guests, which is expected to receive final approval by City
Council this September.
The hot market results from the large
high tech companies that have recently moved into Louisville,
Centrobe (formerly known as NeoData), MKE-Quantum, and Omeda.
Sun MicroSystems new facility in Broomfield is expected to bring
even more corporate travelers to the area.
Hirsch's preliminary plan has been well
received by City Council, but the project is far from final approval.
Hirsch purchased the property for $230,000 (well below the asking
price of $375,000) from the Moffitt family who has owned it since
1879. He plans to raze the existing dilapidated building and
build a 12-room, 10,000-square-foot inn, called the Moffitt House.
The new inn will be built in a historic Vernacular architectural
style and decorated with antiques from the Victorian and Eastlake
periods. Hirsch will play up the history of the property, with
old photos of the Moffitt family and stories of the underground
tunnel which members of the Chicago Mafia reportedly used to
smuggle whisky during the prohibition era.
Hirsch, who often stays in bed and breakfast
inns himself, is designing his building with corporate clients
in mind. Several rooms will be suites with kitchenettes and fax
and modem lines. "Some people prefer the clean, sterile
environment of a chain hotel, some would like to read a book
with their feet up by the fire and have a little chit chat with
the innkeeper," he said. "I hope there are at least
12 of those (per night)."
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