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How Olympic Hotels Survive After The Games What happens to a hotel market once the Olympic flame is doused? And what about all those properties built in anticipation of the Games? Monday, February 15, 2010 Caryn Eve Murray

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It’s a competitive marathon of the highest order: More than two weeks of Olympic Winter Games grip Vancouver, bringing a rush of adrenalin and media overexposure for athletes and scenic British Columbia.

And only a little more quietly, the hotels, motels and inns there engage in an endurance trial of their own, housing the athletes, coaches, support staff, media, Olympic officials and, inevitably, serious devotees of the Games.

But during the last year or so, the hospitality industry itself has been involved in some much more daunting challenges that constitute anything but games, winter or otherwise: They’ve had to face the Downhill Slide (with respect to the economy), Skating on Thin Ice (referring to the balance sheet), and let’s not forget the Freestyle Free Fall (of room vacancies). Everywhere, hotels are closing, changing hands – or changing image.

Olympic host cities, however, seem to have been better positioned for survival in these tough times because, just like the athletes themselves, they were in training for a long time before the biggest challenges came.

Atlanta already had a strong draw as a business town and convention destination by the time the city received the nod to host the 1996 Summer Games, said Lauren Jarrell, director of communications for the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. So the city geared up for the games by adding space that could accommodate the Olympians’ activities – especially competition in its World Congress Center event space – and, not insignificantly, also pave the way for expanded business later.

“Shortly before we hosted the Olympics our main convention center opened another wing, which really created a demand for higher occupancy and a higher number of rooms in the marketplace,” Jarrell said. “It was an insurance policy for us that we were not building for a demand that was not there, or a demand that would not be there after the Olympics left. It opened up new business opportunities.” By 1996, 47 new hotels had opened throughout the metro area, she said.

But the games brought another plus to Atlanta: They awakened the city’s potential for leisure tourism and inked in its presence on the nation’s sports map.

“There was not a rash of closings [after the games] because the demand was there, at least within our convention district around downtown,” Jarrell said. In fact, more than a decade later, the metropolitan area has 92,000 rooms in hotels and motels and expects to have added 11 more hotels between 2008 and 2012 – many in the boutique and luxury settings. In the last five years, hotels have undertaken more than $230 million in renovations.

“There was very good planning, long-term, for the city,” she said. Thanks to the Olympics, Atlanta has become more of a leisure city than it traditionally used to be – a major plus for the city since corporate business, its traditional mainstay, has suffered.

The expanded Congress Center has also made the city more of a sports destination in its post-Olympic period. “We now have major sporting events, whether it’s an NCAA Final Four or an NBA All Star Game,” Jarrell said. “And we just hosted the largest cheerleading competition in the U.S.” in early February.

Mary Baxter, senior marketing and commerce manager at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, said the international exposure served as a big boost for the city, and the hotel, which served as the headquarters hotel for the International Olympic Committee. She said that boost is reflected in business to this day – particularly international business.

“Obviously we wanted to show our best during the Olympics, and that was great,” Baxter said. But the hotel has continued to burnish its image and its services, completing a two-year, $138-million renovation in July 2008.

Less metropolitan than Atlanta, but no less vibrant, is Lake Placid, NY, home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Games.

When the games packed up and left, it hardly became a ghost town, according to Kimberly Rielly, director of communications for the Lake Placid/Essex County Visitors Bureau.

“Probably the biggest consequence of the 1980 Games was the state’s commitment to the sports venues,” she wrote in a recent e-mail.  “In 1981, New York State announced its decision to place the responsibility for maintaining, managing and promoting all of the Olympic venues under one organization, the New York Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA). The ORDA’s key initiatives have been instrumental in nurturing Lake Placid’s status as a world class winter sports center.” Lake Placid was also designated as an official training site for Olympians.

In addition to improvements on the bobsled, luge and skeleton run, undertaken in 2000, and other enhancements, construction has begun on the new Conference Center at Lake Placid, she said.

“In comparison to other destinations we've looked at, a major impact of the improvements and continuous use of the venues has been the improvement of lodging properties' level of quality,” said Rielly. “Though we offer almost exactly the same number of rooms that we did in 1980, almost across the board, the room stock has been upgraded since then. And while hotel and motel rooms have not increased, occupancy has,” she said.

“Fall leisure travel has increased steadily, and the venues have allowed us to host groups such as Can Am hockey, which fills in the ‘shoulder’ seasons in spring and late fall. Surprisingly to some, we welcome about 67 percent of our visitors in the warm months, rather than the winter.”

In fact, the Olympic sites – almost three decades after the games - remain one of the primary reasons people want to visit Lake Placid, she said.

“This has really helped to keep Lake Placid’s name on the map,” said Sue Cameron, administrative assistant in the visitors bureau office, and a lifelong resident. “We have a very successful tourism business here.”

It also doesn’t hurt to have another success to point to – a success that some still, to this day, call a miracle: It was on Lake Placid ice that the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team bested the Soviet Union’s team and became Gold Medalists in 1980. “What happened with that hockey team has kept those games alive,” said Cameron.

Not to mention the rest of Lake Placid, as it continues to bask in the glow.