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NEW YORK CITY may never sleep, but its tourists generally want to. Yet in recent years, a room shortage has meant more turndowns by hotel reservationists than by the bedtime mint squad.
Now, suddenly, stylish new hotels are sprouting up faster than bank boutiques-a dozen in just the last six months, ranging from familiar family-friendly brands like Red Roof Inn and Hilton to hyper- hip hangouts such as Hudson and Tribeca Grand. By the end of December, the 2000 tally should be about 15-the most new lodgings in any single year and almost twice the number in 1999, not even counting facelifts at countless older properties. Is Manhattan having a hotel building boom, or what?
"It only looks like a boom because you see them coming out of the ground," said Patrick Ford, president of Lodging Econometrics of Portsmouth, N.H., which monitors lodging real estate nationwide. "In an urban market, it takes an incredibly long time from the thought 'I want to build a hotel' to the time that it opens. The hotels coming to fruition now were proposed in the late '90s. Rooms have been necessary because the city has been underbuilt; people can't find rooms in New York City." (This non-boom has taken longer to materialize nationwide, where four years of slightly declining occupancy have finally reversed, he said.)
What started the ball rolling, all analysts agree, was the clearly booming economy. "The tide is up in the harbor everywhere," Ford said. "In Europe it's strong even in spite of the euro decline. And when everyone is feeling reasonably wealthy, people travel."
Big Apple boosters also credit the city's reduced crime rate, spiffed-up Times Square and new family attractions for record tourist numbers over the past five years. And while Orlando may tally more visitors (and have more hotel rooms), New York is America's second- favorite destination overall and No. 1 with international tourists- who've helped spark an almost theatrically worldly aura at the latest lodgings.
"Style is definitely in," said Nell Barrett of the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Hotels never were places to see and be seen. Now they are."
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