Orange County hotels added little meeting space last year, but what they did bring online came creatively in a market where occupancy and room rates are growing.
The 50 venues on the Business Journal’s list of hotel meeting rooms show 1.26 million square feet of indoor meeting space as of December—an increase of 1.3% compared with last year’s 1.25 million square feet (see related coverage, pages 1, 3).
Two key moves:
• The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Anaheim-Orange County in Orange grew its space by more than one-third.
• The Irvine Marriott crafted a hip, Millennial traveler-focused meeting room that connects with public spaces.
Both projects reflect a need to stay current with client needs and the pursuit of contemporary experiences.
“The watchword is creativity,” said Tim Brown, chief executive of Irvine-based Meeting Sites Resource, which conducts meeting space searches and contract negotiations for companies, groups and associations.
Brown said hotels in many markets have added meeting space because it sells rooms, and new spaces are smaller for “a company that might say, ‘Hey, we need 14 breakout rooms’ ” for more interactive, sociable settings than a formal board-meeting approach of times past.
“If you don’t have the space, you can’t sell the rooms.”
That matters, with room rates climbing.
2014 data through November from hotel industry researcher and consultant STR Global in Hendersonville, Tenn., show Orange County with an occupancy rate at 77%, average daily room rates at about $136, and revenue per available room of about $105, all up from a year earlier.
Brown said hotels will gut guest rooms or close a “fine dining” area to create more meeting space.
“There’s so much business, the hotels can’t accommodate it,” he said. “I’ve seen foyers turned into meeting areas. Innovation is key.”
Chasing Youth
Irvine Marriott—No. 11 on the list—had begun to informally use an old 1,500-square-foot sports bar for events, but General Manager Scott McCoy said once the hotel debuted a new lounge, patio, and great room last year, the bar was even more out of place.
Clients today are looking for “dynamic space … [for] productivity plus play,” he said.
“Guests can self-select, recline, meet in groups,” he said. “All the parts are there, but people use the space as they like.”
The new Catalina Meeting Room is private, but it also connects more readily to the new spaces.
“It’s near the patio, it’s near the lounge,” he said. “So it’s secluded, but you’re also engaged. You can end a meeting and go straight into a networking activity.”
The hotel still has traditional meeting space, about 28,500 square feet of it, including roughly half that in its largest single space, plus banquet capacity for 1,000. The new room taps trends and tightens the Marriott’s new focus for its public space.
On the Small Side
The DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Anaheim-Orange County leapt 11 slots on the list from No. 19 to 8 after adding nine small rooms averaging 1,000 square feet each.
That connected it to national trends noted by Meetings Sites Resource’s Brown, and to what other Orange County hotels have done in recent years.
The Hilton Anaheim—No. 1 on the list with 140,000 square feet of meeting space—about two years ago added seven rooms of about 1,000 square feet each.
The project targeted smaller groups at a venue known for booking larger convention business, said General Manager Shaun Robinson.
Other hotels made changes in how meeting space is used.
The Hills in Laguna Hills, No. 36 with 11,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, nabbed more regular business from an unexpected source.
“What we saw more this year was from the dental industry,” said Katherine Tejada, senior sales and marketing manager.
She first noticed a dental office chain that brought in specialists quarterly to teach its staff new procedures. The company “booked rooms and stayed several days,” she said.
A second company came twice last year for a similar reason, and Tejada aims to turn such meetings into a trend all her own.
“We’ve reached out to dental device makers” to expand the hotel’s reach into that industry.
