NATIONAL REPORT— At the top of the summer season, shortly after Memorial Day, Turnberry Isle Resort & Club General Manager Jens Grafe told HOTEL BUSINESS® he was not looking forward to September 2002. While confident the business outlook for fall would be okay with “a very strong October, November, December,” he said “the one month that gives us a headache is September. We have no business from the 8th to the 15th. Everybody seems to be expecting something at the anniversary of 9/11. We don’t know yet how we cope with that.” Now summer is on the wane, Labor Day is around the corner, and the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States is almost here. And while business is not expected to be robust that week, it’s apparently not the dreaded dearth initially expected. In fact, a random sampling of properties in key destinations by HOTEL BUSINESS® showed groups in many instances did not cancel out, and the hardest hit market— New York City— has properties showing strong business, particularly due to visitors who want to commemorate the events at ceremonies near Ground Zero. This is the case for Marriott International, which lost the World Trade Center property and suffered significant damage to the World Financial Center property two blocks away. The chain’s numerous New York City hotels, particularly the Marriott Marquis, each are looking at strong occupancies. “At the Marquis, guestrooms are almost at 100% occupancy,” said General Manager Michael Stengel, adding a large convention booked 1,200 of the hotel’s 1,900 rooms more than two years ago for Sept. 8-13 and is keeping the dates. “The group is also space intensive with a lot of receptions, so most of our banquet space is booked for that week,” Stengel said. Despite 9/11 and its aftermath, the group never reconsidered the dates or location of their event, according to Stengel. “I’m not surprised. People want to conduct business as usual.” In addition to the convention, the hotel has booked a couple of small meetings and some transient business to fill the remaining rooms. “We’ve got a lot of leisure travelers, people who want to be in New York that day [9/11] for the ceremonies,” he added. A Marriott spokesperson said the Marquis is not an exception: “We expect extremely high occupancies in all of our New York City Marriotts,” with guestroom occupancy expected to run at 100% for the week at each, although some hotels probably will have meeting space available, the spokesperson added. At the Omni Hotel at CNN Center in Atlanta, business that week will be bolstered by a citywide software convention called Networld + Interop, said Stephanie Orr, director of marketing. “The major arrival dates for the convention are the 8th and the 9th, and the major check-out date is the 12th,” said Orr. The convention was held around those same dates in 2001, and had pre-booked this year’s convention for the same time. So far, rooms booked for the convention are on pace with last year, so people are returning, she said. She noted while it appears there’ll be less business booked by individual travelers that week, group business appears to be stronger. Although business is coming in through shorter booking windows, Orr said the booking pace is ahead of six, 12 and 18 months ago, and is strong. She said that it “should take us into 2003.” She predicted October will be “a little” stronger than normal since “many people are are not traveling on the 11th this year. If they are traveling, then they are traveling before or after the 11th. People want to be where they are going on the 11th.” As a result, many people are looking to push travel plans back to the last two weeks of September, and all of October. “Just going by the overnight sleeping rooms revenue, at this point we are 15% ahead of last year,” Orr said. That percentage, she thinks, has significant potential to increase in October depending on the pushout from September. Toward that, Orr said, at pre
