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The brand-new Hotel Macklowe & Macklowe Conference Center is offering meeting planners a hot deal: Groups that book the property through the summer get the second day's guest rooms, meeting rooms and meals free.
The landmark Tavern on the Green restaurant has an impressive summer special as well: 40%, off all menu prices.
Also, the 1,800-room Marriott Marquis, despite strong occupancy, is introducing a meeting concierge floor next month; the concierge and a roving assistant will be on hand to assist meeting planners daily from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Better service. Lower prices. Is this New York? The answer is an emphatic yes. A flush of new rooms is arriving on the market precisely when it's depressed by a national economy that's stagnant, and a regional one that's in recession. Meetings are fewer and shorter, and fewer people are attending.
In the first four months of this year, the number of conventions held in the city totaled 260, a 10.7% decline from the same period of 1989, according to the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau. Hotel meeting business dropped 5.2% in May, compared with May of 1989, and was down 1.7% in the first five months of 1990, according to Laventhol & Horwath, an accounting firm that monitors the hotel industry. And for the first time in years, the average room rate hike of 2.6% from April 1989 to April 1990 didn't keep pace with inflation.
just as demand is slackening, the supply side of the equation is surging. In the past year alone, seven major hotels have opened, adding another 3,100 rooms to Manhattan's inventory of more than 45,000. Between 1991 and 1993, another nine properties are scheduled to open,...