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The Courtyard by Marriott has increased the number of rooms it makes available to those planning events at the Blair County Convention Center, but the boost is not enough to keep convention center personnel from pursuit of another on-site lodging facility.
The Courtyard by Marriott now offers as many as 50 to 80 rooms per day for groups interested in booking the convention center, said Eva Eagler, director of sales and marketing at the Courtyard by Marriott on Convention Center Drive.
The facility's previous practice was to set aside 30 rooms for convention center guests staying at the 105-room facility.
"Eva and the Courtyard have been able to be more generous with their available rooms than the facility was able to be previously," convention center CEO Barry Kumpf said Wednesday. "But it's still not the long-term solution for us."
Convention center personnel have long been interested in more on-site lodging so the facility can compete for conferences planned by larger groups and state associations involving overnight stays.
Kumpf said the convention center is losing business to facilities in Lancaster, Erie and State College because they have attached lodging with 300-plus rooms.
At a recent meeting, convention center authority members spoke of trying to identify a hotel management company interested in mapping out a plan to operate an on-site hotel if one were to be built.
Earlier efforts to identify a developer interested in building and operating a hotel have yielded no results.
Kumpf said he appreciates Marriott's change in practice that sets aside more rooms, based on availability.
"It's a help, and I don't want to discount that because it may help us secure three to 10 new groups next year," Kumpf said. "But it won't help us get a group like the county commissioners state association, which would need about 250 rooms."
For its annual three-day August conference and trade show, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania booked the Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, which offers two on-site hotels, one with 200 rooms and as second with 192 rooms. The association also has subsequent events booked in Hershey, Harrisburg and State College, its website shows.
Eagler said the Marriott's practice of making more rooms available has developed over the last two years as the amount of options increased.
"As the local market has been growing, we've been able to open more rooms to the convention center," she said.
"But it's not enough to make us competitive with those (out-of-town) properties that we're trying to steal business from," Kumpf said. "I'm not saying we want to take away dollars now being spent at The Casino at Lakemont Park or the Jaffa Mosque. What I'm saying is we're trying to import more dollars into our community …. and to do that, we need more (on-site) rooms."