Hotel bargains hard to find
Put off by higher Pinellas room rates, tourists are less likely to return.
By STEVE HUETTEL, Times Staff Writer
Published September 13, 2007
Pinellas County hotels are fetching smaller price increases, occupancy is falling and economic worries are rising. Put together, it signals growing concern that area hotels could become too pricey.
Already, significantly fewer summer visitors surveyed for the county's tourism marketing agency called Pinellas a good value or described their lodging as "reasonably priced."
Hotels nationwide have been willing to trade more empty rooms for higher rates, and Pinellas is no exception.
But at a time when the county's annual daily average rate could crack $100 for the first time, some managers and observers are wondering if they've pushed prices as far as many customers will pay.
"We've got to be careful not to price ourselves out of the market," said Walter Klages, whose Tampa company conducts research for the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau.
That's exactly what general manager Anthony Satterfield heard from employees at the Alden Beach Resort in St. Pete Beach after two successive years of double-digit percent rate hikes.
"They felt like we were getting to the point where people weren't going to take another price increase," he said. With flagging home construction and subprime mortgage problems threatening the economy, Satterfield agreed.
The owners froze rates for 2008 at the hotel, where daily prices range from $349 for a beachfront suite in spring season to $129 for a room off the water from August through December.
At the TradeWinds Islands Resorts in St. Pete Beach, chief executive Tim Bogott expects to raise rates 2 or 3 percent for 2008 after a couple years of increases two or three times as high.
Hotel owners are already in slowdown mode. The county's average daily room rate rose less than 5 percent year-to-year in May and July, the smallest increase in more than two years.
Attracting higher prices is especially tough on Pinellas beaches, where most hotels were built from the 1950s to the 1970s and don't compare to modern resorts, he said.
"Even though they've been renovated, they're not designed the way new-built product is today," said Bogott, a vocal supporter of proposals to let owners in Pinellas rebuild hotels with more rooms on exiting sites.
Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.
FAST FACTS68.3% Visitors in May 2007 who thought Pinellas hotels were a "good value for the money."
84% Visitors in May 2006 who thought that.
66.6% Visitors in May 2007 who said Pinellas lodging was "reasonably priced."
82.4% Visitors in May 2006 who said that.
Source: St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau research