With room to spare

During the warm summer months, there's a sports tournament of some kind -- soccer, softball, baseball -- going on in Cape Girardeau almost every weekend, drawing hundreds of young athletes and their family fans from Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Illinois.

At first glance, it would seem that must be a bonanza for area hotels that are suddenly booked solid with accidental tourists, who also must be out spending their money in local restaurants, shops and stores.

Not always.

On some of those weekends, visitors here for a variety of events aren't even staying in Cape Girardeau because the hotels here are booked solid, sending them -- and their cash -- to less crowded hotels in other places.

"There are times when there's a lot of events going on in the community and the hotels are pretty tight," said Scott Williams, recreation division manager for the Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Department. "They end up staying as far south as Sikeston or as far north as Perryville."

Guests of the Holiday Inn Express in Cape Girardeau entered the lobby through the sliding doors. Hotel occupancy rates in Cape Girardeau have been in decline, a contrast to the national market, which has been on the rise.

The answer seems obvious: More hotels, right?

The immediate conclusion that those booked-solid weekends means Cape Girardeau needs more hotels isn't an accurate one, say hotel owners. In fact, they say, unlike the hotel industry nationwide, occupancy rates in Cape Girardeau are on the decline.

"In contrast to the relatively strong national demand for hotel rooms, occupancy for our Cape market has trended down this year," said Drury Hotels spokesman Eric Strand in an e-mail.

In Cape Girardeau, Drury Hotels owns Drury Lodge, Drury Suites, Pear Tree Inn and Hampton Inn. Drury Hotels is owned by Charles and Bob Drury. Midamerica Hotels, which owns the Holiday Inn Express, is owned by Jim Drury. Cape Girardeau has 11 hotels, a total of 794 hotel and motel rooms and 16 bed and breakfast rooms.

The Drurys don't make occupancy rates public, but Strand said demand is so inconsistent that Drury Hotels has put its plans for a new 180-room Drury Inn & Suites on hold. The hotel had been planned for construction at Interstate 55 and Highway 74 for the past few years, but now its future is cloudy.

While Drury has new hotels underway in Cincinnati; Columbia, Ohio; Greenville, S.C.; Amarillo and San Antonio, Texas; O'Fallon, Ill.; and one recently completed in Chesterfield, Mo.; the property along I-55 will sit vacant until the demand picks up, Strand said.

"The Drury Inn & Suites project is on hold until the fundamentals indicating the need for more hotel inventory in the market improves," he said. "When they do, we'll be ready to start moving dirt."

Dan Drury, president of Midamerica Hotels, said that the market is too soft right now for more hotels. It's true that on some weekends finding a hotel room is difficult, he said. But that's not every weekend -- by far -- and it's certainly not the case during the work week, he said.

"At certain times, we don't have enough," he said. "At other times, we have way too many. And we just can't do well on weekends. You can't build a restaurant or any other business and only do well Friday and Saturday. It's got to be consistent."

Drury points to several problems -- the timing of event scheduling, lack of hospitality venues and not enough tourist-attracting recreational outlets. More convention space, a man-made recreational lake and better organization for evenly scheduling events would all help, he said.

Drury also believes the money generated by the city's hotel and restaurant tax is misdirected.

So where does the money go?

"It's spelled S-E-M-O, Southeast Missouri State University," Drury said.

The hotel tax is part of a 5 percent hotel-restaurant tax, 4 percent for hotels and 1 percent for restaurants. A small portion of the tax is used to fund the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau and the rest is used to pay off bonds, primarily the bonds issued for the university's River Campus, said CVB director Chuck Martin.

An interesting twist to the downward trend in occupancy rates is that the actual hotel tax is up 15.04 percent this year from the same time last year, Martin said. For fiscal 2006 -- when ends in June -- $480,626 had been collected through May. That's more than was collected in the entirety of 2005, when $457,495 was generated.

But Martin said the increase can be attributed to several factors other than the number of rooms -- increasing room rates, chief among them. Other factors include the fact the old Holiday Inn was razed and out of commission in 2005. So when the new Holiday Inn Express was opened, it immediately bolstered the numbers, he said. Also, Drury Lodge was under renovations for several months and some visitors might have thought it was closed, he said.

"So it's 3 to 5 percent next year, I'll take it," Martin said.

Meanwhile, Martin said the CVB is working hard every day to bring in more conventions and tourism-drawing events.

"We are making great strides," he said. "Are we where we'd like to be? Of course not. But we're not sitting still."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137

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By the numbers

* Hotels in Cape Girardeau: 11

* Hotel rooms: 794

* Bed and breakfast rooms: 16

* Hotel and restaurant tax: 5 percent, 4 percent of which is paid by hotel patrons.

* Tax generated year to date: Up 15.04 percent from last year, a total of $480,626 collected from July 1, 2005 to May 31, 2006.

SOURCE: Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau