As a local developer aired details on a planned hotel for Stamford”™s waterfront, the overall industry continued to take steps toward recovery despite the twin specters of higher taxes and a looming mandate to offer workers paid sick leave.
Room occupancy tax collections in Connecticut spiked nearly 80 percent in October compared to a year earlier, with the recent nor”™easter likely contributing a portion of that as families took refuge from cold temperatures during what turned into an extended power outage in many parts of Fairfield County and Connecticut. Still, for the quarter ending in September hotel tax revenue was running 30 percent ahead the pace of a year earlier.
As first reported by the Stamford Advocate in late November, Building & Land Technology L.L.C. is planning a hotel with at least 130 rooms and 60 condominiums where Washington Boulevard meets Stamford”™s harbor. In a city filing cited by the newspaper, BLT stated it has spoken with a boutique hotel operator interested in running the facility.
One of the biggest names in the business is taking up quarters a few doors over. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. is expected to complete the relocation of its headquarters offices to Stamford from White Plains, N.Y., making it one of the city”™s larger employers with 850 people slated to work here. Starwood Hotels operates multiple boutique hotels, including Aloft and W, which both have a significant New York presence.
The occupancy rate at Stamford hotels stood at nearly 65 percent in October on average, according to STR Global, a Henderson, Tenn.-based company that tracks industry statistics. That was up nearly 3 percent from a year earlier and in line with the rate of increase nationally, though off the nearly 70 percent occupancy rate Stamford hotels achieved in September that represented the highest monthly mark in four years.
Revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key performance measure used by the industry, was up 11 percent in Stamford in October, against a 7 percent increase nationally.
Starwood”™s own RevPAR was up 8 percent in the third quarter, though the company”™s New York City hotels lagged other markets at just 5 percent.
“New York blazed the way for the recovery early on,” said Frits van Paasschen, Starwood Hotels CEO, in a conference call with investment analysts to review the company”™s third-quarter results. “It was very strong and the dynamic of the financial service industry is obviously a challenge for the lodging market overall. But I would also point to the fact that not only is New York resilient, but its economic base is increasingly diverse.
“If you look at the overall number of visits into New York, which is getting close to 50 million and essentially already where it was in ”˜07, New York is strong,” he added. “(It) will continue to be that way, but probably ”¦ not the same kind of percentage growth that we saw earlier in the recovery.”
In Connecticut, hotels and restaurants added 1,400 jobs in October, amounting to a 1.3 percent increase according to the Connecticut Department of Labor. The DOL added the sector could have fared worse, but for a stretch of warm weather ”“ and while the weeklong stampede to hotels in the wake of the nor”™easter power outages did not result in hotels adding jobs, it momentarily boosted their bottom line.
Hoteliers continued to plow some of those gains into Fairfield County venues in 2011. Starwood Hotels converted a former Holiday Inn in downtown Stamford to the Sheraton brand and the Stamford Plaza and Conference Center is readying to adopt the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn Express logos. Also, the Hyatt Regency Greenwich Hotel is completing $35 million in renovations early next year, marking the 25th anniversary of the 375-room hotel.
