The Hard Rock entertainment, gaming, and hospitality brand is solidifying its place in Bristol on Nov. 14 with the formal opening of its Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol, a $515 million resort and casino.
The company has had a presence in the city for the last two years via a temporary casino facility, but the launch of more permanent facilities will mean the opening of the hotel, along with other amenities.
The facility — it spans more than 622,000 square feet — includes a 303-room hotel, multiple bars and restaurants, over 20,000 square feet of event space, a spa, a resort pool, an outdoor live music stage, and a pastry kitchen.
Hard Rock will bring its flair of music-related stylings to the resort, with an extensive memorabilia collection that focuses on country and western music genres. The Nov. 14 grand opening also will feature a concert by country music star and “The Voice” coach Blake Shelton.
Located at the former Bristol Mall, the casino is proving to be an economic driver for the city. Since July 2022, when the temporary casino opened, Hard Rock has paid more than $66 million in gaming taxes to the state and welcomed more than 3 million visitors.
“When we open, we’ll open with over 1,400 [employees],” says Hassan Abdel-Moneim, director of hotel operations for Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol. “Our minimum wage in the casino is $18 an hour. This is really going to help spur growth and development in the area and provide people a standard of living that they don’t currently have.”
Northern Virginia
In Alexandria, what was once the George Mason Hotel in the 1920s reopened as Hotel Heron in June. The 134-room boutique hotel is part of Aparium Hotel Group and comes with more than 3,500 square feet of indoor event space and a rooftop bar overlooking the Potomac River.
The state is expected to get its first JW Marriott hotel in mid-2025. The JW Marriott at Reston Station will be a 243-room hotel that rests below 94 condominiums. Managed by Crescent Hotels & Resorts, the hotel will contain 25,000 square feet of event space and be part of The Row at Reston Station.
Also coming to the Reston area at the end of the year is a hotel that’s a combination of two brands under the Marriott umbrella. The upcoming AC Hotel by Marriott/Residence Inn by Marriott Reston will consist of 147 guest rooms under the AC brand and 120 under Residence Inn. It will have approximately 11,000 square feet of event space and a rooftop lounge with a mountain view; both the AC half and the Residence Inn part are set to open in January 2025.
In July, The Publisher Hotel in Fredericksburg opened as part of Marriott’s Tribute Portfolio. The 98-room hotel stands where The Free Lance-Star newspaper’s former office was in downtown Fredericksburg, and includes 1,800 square feet of event space.
Central Virginia
The University of Virginia’s Virginia Guesthouse will be a hotel and conference center with 214 guest rooms, 29,000 square feet of meeting space and approximately 12,000 square feet of public space. It is expected to open in fall 2025 near the new School of Data Science in the Ivy Corridor.
Shenandoah Mansions, a 73-room hotel located in a building dating back more than a century in Richmond’s Fan District, is expected to open in February 2025. The fifth hotel from national hotelier Ash, the motifs of its rooms will pay homage to American folk art.
Southern Virginia
Located in Danville, the $750 million Caesars Virginia Casino and Resort, replacing the temporary casino, is expected to open by December, Danville officials say. The hotel is set to have 320 rooms, along with a 90,000-square-foot casino floor, a full-service spa and 12 restaurants and bars. It is slated to contain 50,000 square feet of meeting and convention space.
Hampton Roads
At the moment, new lodgings in Norfolk and Virginia Beach are mainly in the discussion stage. In April, Norfolk’s mayor announced the city’s MacArthur Center mall would be replaced with a mixed-use development that could include a 400-room, military-themed hotel known as The Anchorage.
Meanwhile, Divaris Real Estate Chair-man and CEO Gerald Divaris and former Gov. Robert McDonnell have proposed a 450-room hotel on 17th Street in Virginia Beach, according to city officials.
People who attended the annual Virginia Fire Rescue Conference in February could buy the latest rescue equipment, tools, turnout gear, radios, oxygen tanks — even a 30,000-pound pumper fire truck.
“If you’ve got your checkbook … you can drive that truck home,” says Christian Eudailey, executive director of the Virginia Fire Chiefs Association, which organizes the conference every winter in Virginia Beach.
More than 2,000 fire and rescue personnel flooded the Virginia Beach Convention Center’s 150,000 square feet of indoor space during the six-day conference. The association budgets about $425,000 for the event to cover expenses like facility rental, audiovisual needs and staff lodging.
Event attendees booked about 2,000 room nights across a week this year. The association’s budget doesn’t include meals, tourism activities or nights on the town for the attendees, many of whom bring spouses and family with them.
“The restaurants see a real uptick in their business” when the convention is in town, Eudailey says. “You’ve got a lot of hungry firefighters who like to eat.”
Conventions such as the Virginia Fire Rescue Conference clearly bring dollars to Virginia Beach, but the extent of economic impact delivered by those kinds of events hasn’t been fully measured in Virginia. That will change soon, as the Virginia Tourism Corp. was set to release the results of a study, the Economic Impact of Meetings in Virginia, conducted with global travel research firm Tourism Economics, in late October, after this story went to press. The study was expected to show that convention business provides a substantial economic benefit to communities, a benefit that seems to have eclipsed pre-pandemic levels of visitor spending.
Dan Roberts, VTC’s vice president of research and strategy, says in-person business gatherings and conferences are increasing in number, easing fears among tourism officials that the pandemic had permanently shifted the landscape away from large-scale, in-person meetings for businesses and other organizations.
“Back in 2020, people asked if business travel would ever come back,” Roberts says. “It’s coming back in earnest.”
Conventions are big business, even if they’re not business-related. In Richmond, the sci-fi and fantasy-themed GalaxyCon brought 33,000 people to the Greater Richmond Convention Center over three days in March, providing a $2.86 million economic boost, according to GalaxyCon founder and President Mike Broder.
The 25-year-old downtown Richmond convention center, the largest in the state at 700,000 square feet, hosted 218 events in fiscal 2023, up 21% from the previous year. That’s according to the authority that manages the facility, an organization created by the governments of the City of Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties.
A booming business
Arlington County’s Convention and Visitors Service worked with groups that added as much as $32 million to the local economy. That number, however, is just the business that the convention service’s two-person team handled themselves. The county has no general convention center, relying instead on four major hotels and other venues for much of its convention traffic, which means getting total economic numbers is nearly impossible.
“An American Werewolf in London” actor Griffin Dunne signs autographs in 2023 at Nightmare Weekend Richmond, an event put on by GalaxyCon at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. Photo courtesy GalaxyCon
“It’s hard to wrap your arms around it all because the hotels are so competitive among themselves that they don’t want to share which conferences they got, [or] how many room nights they were booked,” says Portia Conerly, Arlington Convention and Visitors Service’s sales director. “Because the minute that’s out there, then everyone’s pouncing on that opportunity for the next time.”
Convention business is booming in Northern Virginia, though, where Roberts and other tourism officials say that competition among hotels and municipalities is driving growth in weeknight lodging stays by convention attendees, a sign that people are arriving at convention sites earlier and staying longer.
From Virginia Beach to the Blue Ridge Mountains, organizations are gathering in groups that range from a few dozen to thousands.
“Virtual meetings are not going anywhere, but face-to-face experiences are what people are looking for,” says Roxana Rivera, Arlington Convention and Visitors Service’s destination sales manager. “That’s where the opportunities are, and people are realizing that. And we are able to see that with the number of meetings and events that keep going up.”
Northern Virginia lost much of its travel business during the pandemic, when companies and organizations significantly reduced their in-person gatherings, a market that took longer to rebound than leisure travel.
“It’s been a long recovery,” Roberts says. “The conventions and meetings market was the hardest hit, and it’s been hard to come back.”
The economic impact of meetings comes in two primary ways, he says: visitor spending and operational spending. Visitors benefit the economy by spending money on items such as meals, lodging, transportation and retail within a locality. The impact of operational spending comes from money that supports a conference venue and its workers, as well as meeting planners, audiovisual professionals and people in other roles.
“That is a huge piece of this,” Roberts says of operational spending. “It’s a massive chunk of change.”
Standing out
The needs of convention planners vary, but one of the most basic is the need for space, whether for their members or exhibitors.
“I need a place where I can drive a 60,000-pound ladder truck onto a floor that can hold it,” says Eudailey, the retired Spotsylvania County fire chief who has planned the fire and rescue conference the past 11 years. His group and associated vendors and trainers fill nearly every inch of the vast Virginia Beach center every February.
Space, and the need for lots of it, was the final frontier for GalaxyCon, which landed in Richmond for the first time in 2019. The organization’s Raleigh, North Carolina, convention attracted attendees from Virginia, which prompted organizers to expand into the commonwealth, says Broder, GalaxyCon’s founder. Organizers knew they needed a massive facility to contain more than 30,000 fans, plus vendors.
“There was no large-scale Comic Con event in the area,” Broder says. “Richmond is a vibrant and growing city with a strong student population, which is important to us. The convention center is large enough to host an event like ours. Anything smaller would be challenging, which made it more attractive than some other convention
centers in the region.”
Convention planners now look beyond basic amenities such as large rooms, food, high-speed internet, audiovisual capabilities and other standard fare at convention facilities. These days, event planners want unique experiences for their attendees, often leavened by special requests of host venues.
Groups and businesses want to know what kind of sustainable practices a facility employs, from recycling waste to using renewable energy sources to being LEED-certified. Planners want to know if disabled attendees will be properly accommodated, or if the venue recommends recreational or even community service opportunities for visiting members.
One group that held its convention in Arlington even requested that a local animal shelter provide puppies for their members to play with during breaks.
“Meetings can be a little hectic,” says Arlington’s Conerly, who has found herself playing chief puppy wrangler for visiting conventioneers. “They want to get everybody relaxed again, which I think is cool, so they want to know about those things.”
Added benefits
In Roanoke, regional visitors bureau Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge pushes outdoor recreation as a way to attract out-of-town meetings to venues such as The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center and the Berglund Center. VBR promotes the Roanoke Valley’s hundreds of miles of hiking and mountain biking trails, kayaking and canoeing on the Roanoke River, and more than 20 miles of paved greenways as reasons to meet in the Star City.
“Everyone has a convention center, and when you’re inside, you could be in Virginia or in Utah or New York, because they look the same,” says John Oney, VBR’s vice president of sports and sales.
“How do we differentiate ourselves? For us, it’s outdoor recreation. … It gets a meeting planner fired up when you tell them you can take e-bikes on a brewery tour,” he adds.
VBR hosted 40 events in the Roanoke Valley, creating an $11 million local economic impact in fiscal 2023, but Oney says perhaps 100 or more other large meetings take place in Roanoke. In addition to spending money in the city, some conference attendees perform community service; some groups have volunteered at Roanoke’s Mill Mountain Zoo while in town.
Wytheville, a town of 8,100 right in the Blue Ridge Mountains, opened its own meeting center in 2007 to take advantage of its location at the intersection of interstates 81 and 77, which makes it a convenient meeting spot for groups from a four-state region. The site hosts about 750 events a year, both large and small.
“One of our biggest attributes is our location,” says Shane Terry, Visit Wytheville’s social media and marketing projects coordinator. “We get a lot of overnight stays and
we work with approved caterers, so the meals tax alone makes a lot of economic impact.”
If anything, convention hosts aren’t just selling a facility to hold a meeting. They are also selling their towns and cities and regions to potential businesses and residents, says Emily Cassell, director of the Arlington Convention and Visitors Service.
“We think about every visitor and every meeting and group that comes here as a potential entrée into economic development,” she says. “They see our neighborhoods. They see our food scene, our art scene. … All of those other assets that our community offers are a potential motivator for later business investment, or for a company move or a company expansion. That’s something unique in Arlington, that really tight connection between tourism and
economic development.”
Inclusive narratives, a post-pandemic restaurant industry and artificial intelligence are just a few of the topics that will feature in this year’s VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit, an annual gathering of tourism professionals from across the state and beyond.
Scheduled Nov. 13-15, the 2024 VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit will take place at Hot Springs’ The Omni Homestead Resort, which officially reopened last fall after $150 million in renovations. Last year’s summit took place at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
“It’s really just a chance for the entire industry, suppliers and vendors to come together for networking and sharing the most relevant ideas, technology and concepts for 2024, looking to 2025 and beyond,” says Rita McClenny, president and CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corp.
The VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit provides attendees with an opportunity to network and share ideas, says Virginia Tourism Corp. leader Rita McClenny. Photo courtesy Virginia Tourism Corp.
Attendees and around 60 listed guest speakers will get the opportunity to discuss such ideas during the three-day event. Organizers say they expect strong attendance this year — approximately 450 state tourism professionals and Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick.
“Tourism has grown,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association. “Tourism is growing at a pretty good clip. We’re anticipating that growth to continue in the current year.”
Virginia’s visitor spending in 2023 reached a record high of $33.3 billion, an increase of nearly 10% from the year prior. The industry also supported 13,000 more jobs in 2023 — more than 224,000 jobs total — compared with 2022.
The summit will kick off Nov. 13 with networking events and a reception themed around the 20th anniversary of The Crooked Road, Southwest Virginia’s 333-mile driving trail connecting more than 60 venues related to traditional Appalachian old time and bluegrass music.
The day after is when the summit will commence its opening general session. Keynote speakers include Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the National Restaurant Association’s research and knowledge group, and Hilina Ajakaiye, executive vice president of Meet Boston.
“Despite a host of challenges this year, restaurant industry sales nationwide will reach a record $1.1 trillion,” Riehle says. For the commonwealth of Virginia, he says, 2023 sales were well over $27 billion.
The pandemic shook up numerous in-person activities for much of 2020 and 2021, including eating out at restaurants. And these drastic adjustments for the consumer and the industry have fundamentally altered routines today, Riehle says.
“If you look at restaurant traffic today, across all meal periods, industry traffic is still down for on-site visits compared to pre-pandemic levels,” he explains. “Conversely, what the industry calls off-premises traffic — take-out, delivery, drive-through and curbside — for all three meal periods is up compared to what it was pre-pandemic.”
Almost three-quarters of all U.S. restaurant traffic today is off-premises, a sharp hike from 61% before the pandemic, according to Riehle.
Throughout the summit will be a number of “super sessions,” where presenters each cover a different aspect of the tourism industry. Diversity, equity and inclusion, as it relates to tourism marketing and hospitality, will be center stage at a couple of sessions.
According to the event description, OutCoast.com publisher and LGBTQ+ travel content creator Rachel Covello’s session aims to “[explore] the shift in tourism marketing from emphasizing destination aesthetics to prioritizing emotional and mental safety, particularly for minority groups.”
Although leisure travel recovered after the pandemic in 2021, group travel — defined as people traveling together for some organization, shared purpose or agenda — took a couple more years to rebound, says Dan Roberts, vice president of research and strategy for VTC.
“If you look at overall the recovery of the commonwealth going back to 2020, business and group [travel] have had the highest hill to climb,” he says.
Roberts will take part in three sessions during the summit about the hotel industry, group business, success metrics and the group and meetings market in Virginia.
Also on the agenda is artificial intelligence, a growing influence in tourism.
Nov. 15’s schedule will start with a general session, where Todd Brook, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Envisionit, will speak about how to use AI tools to increase team efficiency and productivity.
The summit’s exhibit hall opens Nov. 14 and will feature myriad exhibitors from both in- and out-of-state, including Amtrak Virginia, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Disney Advertising, LeisureMedia360, Tripadvisor and the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission (VA250).
“It is an opportunity to update especially our tourism professionals from across the state on new things that are happening, things that are new to the industry as well as some statistical updates on what’s happening from a data point of view,” Terry says.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected from the print version to reflect that Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick will be at the event, not Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Michael Meyers is always looking for an advantage.
Like many in the meetings industry, the Greater Richmond Convention Center’s general manager has seen his facility’s costs spike from inflation.
Likewise, the price tag to run conferences has increased, so planners and venues are striving to ensure a good return on investment for attendees. And to remain an attractive player in the conference-hosting game, you need to evolve your infrastructure and services.
“People want to make sure you’re maintaining your facility, adding technology that can benefit them,” Meyers says.
A late 2022 report from American Express estimated that costs of running conferences and conventions would increase by 1.5% to 3% this year, and price hikes are expected to continue in 2024 — particularly for food and fuel, according to a trend report from Tysons-based event technology provider Cvent.
Costs and budgets are planners’ biggest concerns, with 44% of planners reporting their event budgets will increase in 2024, according to an August survey of 533 meeting planners jointly conducted by Cvent and Northstar Meetings Group.
Since 2020, when the pandemic upended the hospitality industry, many Virginia meeting spaces have made upgrades that can make a difference when planners select venues. And pretty much since COVID vaccines were released in December 2020, meeting planners have been anxiously awaiting a rebound in business travel for conventions and conferences.
One anonymous respondent to the Cvent/Northstar survey said, “I am very concerned with the huge increases in prices of all aspects of accommodations, services, A/V, catering, transportation, all of the ‘destination’ fees, etc. Most of our clients cannot triple their meeting budgets from one year to the next. We’re between a rock and a hard place with future meeting sourcing, negotiations and contracting.”
Fresh coats of paint
Many conference venues have made updates in the past three years, some timed to coincide with an expected post-pandemic boost in business.
The Greater Richmond Convention Center added complimentary public Wi-Fi, fresh paint, new LED lighting and digital signage, a new digital sound system, and a renovated food hall.
The Virginia Beach Convention Center earned LEED recertification in 2021. The Embassy Suites by Hilton Hampton Convention Center received a multimillion-dollar upgrade with renovated rooms for the 295-room hotel — with more than 4,000 square feet of meeting space — next door to the Hampton Roads Convention Center. The National Conference Center in Leesburg received a makeover of its hotel rooms in 2021 and added technological upgrades.
“Cities and properties that have secured the most conventions and meetings have put a lot of effort into making sure they have unique amenities,” says Mike Dietrich, Cvent’s vice president of marketing. “This could mean adding more dynamic/flexible meetings space, state-of-the-art hybrid event technology, offering distinct menus, or even partnering with local vendors to provide customized experiences.”
Another big trend Meyers has noticed: a desire for outdoor meeting spaces. “Whether you build rooftops or host events outside the facility, you can add a little flavor, get folks outside and [avoid] keeping them locked inside for two or three days,” Meyers says. “I think that’s a trend that’s going to continue. Our industry is always looking for ways to add value to our customers.”
Improvements such as these seem to have helped the industry recover after the pandemic.
In its annual summer meetings outlook, Meeting Professionals International (MPI) reported that 52% of respondents have seen business return to pre-pandemic levels. Nearly 80% reported favorable business conditions heading into summer 2023.
“It’s clear that in-person meetings and conferences are steadily increasing in popularity, as people are eager for face-to-face interaction … and to reap the benefits that can only come from in-person meetings,” says Dietrich.
MPI’s summer outlook found that 82% of meeting professionals surveyed viewed live attendance for conferences as a positive, while only 17% viewed virtual attendance positively.
However, virtual options will likely never disappear, so planners must continue providing and growing opportunities for hybrid conference models. Venues raced to increase technology options during the pandemic to meet demand. Those improvements helped the state’s larger venues weather the pandemic’s economic ebbs and flows and allowed them to stand ready to offer hybrid modalities.
Meyers says business has continued to grow at the Greater Richmond Convention Center despite higher costs for convention customers due to inflation.
“It’s the reason why I believe that the industry is coming back strong,” says Meyers. “We’re seeing business quickly rebound, and this year we will be back to pre-pandemic levels with our activity. We’re in a healthy cycle.”
Not every organization has such a sunny outlook for the industry, however. An August report from business intelligence company Morning Consult concluded that business travel “will never return to [a pre-pandemic] normal.” Among its findings: Older business travelers have retired, and younger professionals who have entered the space are more cost-conscious and “in charge of their own booking and planning.”
However, Cvent found that 94% of travel managers felt optimistic about business travel activity. American Express found the return to in-person meetings grew more rapidly this year than many expected, with a stabilization forecast for 2024.
The willingness to invest in upgrades to conference capabilities and hotel offerings has helped Virginia’s meetings and conventions industry rebound in particular, according to Dietrich, who cites the state’s proximity to the nation’s capital and government business.
Top convention cities and venues are putting extra effort into “unique amenities” such as hybrid event tech, says Mike Dietrich, vice president of marketing for Tysons-based Cvent. Photo by Shannon Ayres
Convention centers and large meeting spaces across the state are convenient to airports and the Interstate 95 corridor. The Washington, D.C., market, including Northern Virginia — which Cvent ranked 11th for top meeting destinations in 2023 — remains a favorite for conventions due to its plethora of museums and cultural attractions. Visitors spent $30.3 billion in the commonwealth in 2022, an increase of 4.4% from pre-pandemic spending in 2019, according to Virginia Tourism Corp.
Mixing business with fun
Hotel revenues have increased and so have room rates, up 13.7% from 2019, according to a report from Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy.
Northern Virginia’s lodging industry, which has historically been more reliant on business travel than other areas, continues to lag the rest of the state in hotel revenues and is the only region where the industry has not recovered from the pandemic. The region represented about 3.6% less of the state’s overall hotel revenues for July 2023 than in July 2019. Nevertheless, ODU still found Northern Virginia had a 23.8% increase in hotel revenue from 2022 to 2023, with an 8.9% increase in rooms sold.
The state has also benefited from business-leisure travel — aka “bleisure” — Dietrich adds. “Employees are eager to get out and see the world after years of remote work where they were mainly confined to their homes. Now, business travelers are jumping at the opportunity to convert their business trips into mini vacations, adding on some much-needed leisure time to the itinerary.”
Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Kurt Krause says he’s noticed a spike in hotel occupancies in the days before and/or after a convention.
“We have good cultural options: the ocean, great museums, the history at Colonial Williamsburg — everything one gas tank away,” says Krause. “People come early or stay later to experience the area, bringing their family along.”
Venues and planners offering robust digital options also are seeing increased interest from audiences, Dietrich says.
By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels, according to a Cvent study, so venues can capture customers by offering online booking. The percentage of event planners who are more likely to select a location if it offers online booking increased by 33% from 2022 to 2023.
He also has seen increased industry adoption of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT to create everything from marketing emails to website content to RFP responses for sourcing venues.
Increasingly, planners also are seeking accessible options, Dietrich says. Closed captioning, language translations, and accessible website and registration experiences help reach a more diverse audience.
“Event professionals have continued to leverage technology to not only streamline the planning process but to also bring those digital elements into the in-person event to enhance attendee engagement and enable better event insights,” Dietrich says.
Hiring shortages persist
Meyers got a firsthand view of the state of meetings this summer in Pittsburgh. For the first time since the pandemic, Meyers attended VenueConnect, a conference and trade show for convention venue managers. The sessions featured forward-thinking topics — including multiple sessions on sustainability and diverse workforce recruitment — rather than focusing on rebounding from the pandemic.
But when Meyers and his colleagues gathered on the sidelines between sessions, the topic gravitated toward a significant industry challenge: hiring.
About 50.5 million American workers quit their jobs in 2022, breaking the “Great Resignation” record set in 2021 by 2.2 million, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many cited factors such as work-life balance, compensation, child care needs and workplace flexibility as factors. Meanwhile, the hospitality and food services industry, already battered by the pandemic, also saw higher quit rates last year than in 2021.
The leisure and hospitality industry added roughly 40,000 jobs in August 2023, an increase of about 8,000 jobs since July, according to federal data. But leisure and hospitality employment is still down 1.7%, or about 290,000 jobs, below February 2020. The industry’s unemployment rate is at 5.8%, among the highest levels of sectors measured by BLS.
“We saw a lot of experienced staff on the meeting planner side and on the venue side decide to leave the industry during the pandemic,” Meyers says. “Now you struggle on the venue side to hire people because this is a tough schedule with working nights and weekends in particular. We have to do some unique things like building better schedules, increasing wages and offering advancement and easing the burden on people who want a work-life balance.”
Dietrich says technology can also ease the sting of worker shortages. “Many hotels have also started to implement direct online booking options that help streamline the booking process, saving time for both event and convention planners and hotel managers,” he says.
Regardless of industry challenges, it hasn’t deterred plans for building new convention hotels and meeting spaces. American Express reported that 59% of its industry forecast respondents predicted there will be an increase in hotel rooms in 2024, with another 58% expecting a growth in meeting space.
Here in Virginia, a pair of hotels with meeting space opened on college campuses in April — The Highlander Hotel Radford and The Forum Hotel at the University of Virginia — and a hotel/conference center with 25,000 square feet of meeting space, the Virginia Guesthouse and Conference Center, is scheduled to open at U.Va. in 2025.
“We are optimistic about the current state of the economy and its outlook,” says Katie Murphy, senior marketing and communications manager for the U.Va. Foundation, which manages the university’s real estate. “Our models were built on a significant amount of university-related business, which gives us confidence in the Virginia Guesthouse’s position and its planned opening in 2025.”
Meanwhile, Meyers notes, Richmond’s city government is evaluating proposals for City Center, a 9.4-acre downtown “innovation district” that would include replacing the shuttered Richmond Coliseum with a hotel tower that could become the tallest building in Richmond. The minimum 500-room hotel would support business at the nearby convention center.
“It’s easier to solve a problem of [room and hotel shortages] when the industry is on an upswing,” Meyers says. “Getting this done [along with other hotels and meeting spaces coming online] will be a big benefit to us, the community and our region to have.”
Event planners and hospitality industry experts worldwide will converge upon Richmond to grow their professional networks, discuss the latest developments in the tourism sector and celebrate travel in Virginia during the 2023 VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit.
Taking place Nov. 12-14 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center, the event will offer workshops and classes focusing on topics such as sports tourism, return-on-investment data, digital marketing, workforce development, accessibility and the outlook for the meetings and events industry. This year’s theme is “Get in the Game.”
Attendees will take part in general and breakout sessions on Monday, Nov. 13, and Tuesday, Nov. 14, during a conference that offers an impressive lineup of headliners, keynote and session speakers.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin will share remarks during the VA1 opening general session and lunch on Nov. 13.
“Virginia sets the national standard for tourism, creating jobs and injecting critical dollars back into our communities,” Youngkin says. “Tourism is the cornerstone of future development, cultivating necessary job expansion and growth to help Virginia reach new heights. I look forward to the innovation that will come from this year’s VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit.”
The summit will attract about 450 attendees, plus exhibitors, with its “tremendous amount of educational content,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association, one of the organizers of the annual summit, which is hosted in a different location in the commonwealth each year. (Last year’s event was held in Norfolk.)
Among the major challenges in organizing an event of this scale, Terry says, is the number of hotel rooms needed to accommodate attendees, speakers and exhibitors. “We are limited in terms of places that we can do this conference, even in Virginia.” As of mid-September, rooms at the downtown Richmond Marriott near the convention center were sold out, but rooms were available at the nearby Hilton Richmond Downtown.
In 2022, visitors spent a record $30.3 billion in Virginia, a 20.3% increase from 2021, Youngkin announced in August.
“Visitor spending in Virginia exceeded $30 billion for the first time in our history, reaching $30.3 billion, and is now about 4% higher than it was prior to the pandemic,” notes Virginia Tourism Corp.’s vice president of research and strategy, Dan Roberts, who will speak during two summit sessions.
“To bring that into perspective, that means visitors are spending $83 million a day in the commonwealth. The entire tourism industry, from our hotels and restaurants to our local and regional destination marketing organizations and [convention and visitors bureaus] have all had a hand in driving that recovery,” Roberts adds.
Sarah Dandashy, who runs the website “Ask a Concierge,” is another headliner speaker at this year’s opening session and lunch. An author and TV personality, she has more than 18 years of experience in the luxury hotel industry.
“Despite economic and employment challenges, Americans are still making travel a priority. And it shows,” Dandashy says, but she notes that “the meeting planning industry is still rebounding — and it continues to look positive, but today’s group business demands have shifted.”
Ongoing trends that impact meeting planners, she notes, include “inflation; the decentralized workforce; the well-being of attendees; issues around diversity, equity and inclusion; technology; and sustainability.”
Business travel, though, is one segment that hasn’t fully recovered in Virginia, which impacts the hospitality industry in Northern Virginia, as well as bookings at large conference venues and work for meeting planners, Roberts notes.
“At the end of 2022, business travel spending throughout the commonwealth has only recovered to 77% of 2019 levels,” he says, while noting that events like the summit help people in the meetings and events industry learn from their colleagues and adapt.
“VA1 represents the incredible value of meeting face to face to share information, look ahead and build meaningful relationships throughout our industry, which are all reasons that Virginia and the travel industry nationwide can expect a full recovery in business travel,” Roberts says.
Business-related travel and events are slowly making a comeback in the post-pandemic era.
In 2022, visitors to Virginia spent $30.3 billion in the commonwealth, exceeding 2019 spending by 4%. Of that spending, $4.8 billion was from business travelers, says Dan Roberts, vice president of research and strategy for Virginia Tourism Corp.
While none of the associations and experts Virginia Business contacted for this story had specific statewide economic impact figures associated with just conferences and conventions, they say that conference and convention activity is trending toward pre-pandemic levels and could eventually outpace it.
“We have seen a rebound in conferences and meetings at hotels,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association. “By far, corporate meetings spend the greatest amount per meeting, followed by professional organizations. We are hopeful that this rebound will continue as more and more companies bring their people back into the office.”
Vinod Agarwal, an economics professor and deputy director of Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis, says it is challenging to determine the true economic impact of business travel, because some conference and convention attendees are local residents or people from other parts of Virginia, as opposed to visitors from other states or countries.
“If only the local guys are coming for the meeting, the conference’s economic impact is different from [having outside attendees],” Agarwal says. “How many people actually come from out of town? Or out of the area? That number is relatively small. But if you want to get tourists or visitors from outside [who are] spending money, that is extra stimulus.”
Anecdotally, Dean Miller, the national sales manager of groups and meetings for Visit Fairfax, the county’s convention and visitors bureau, says he’s never been busier in the 18 years he’s been with the organization. In Fairfax County, “the demand is just off the charts right now” for conventions and conferences, he says.
Indeed, weeknight demand throughout 2023 has been a “source of strength for Virginia,” Roberts adds.
“Despite the steep hill that business travel still has to climb, we are optimistic on its recovery path,” he says. “Our highest hotel occupancies in recent months have been posted on weeknights in markets catering to business travelers, such as Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, which we see as a normalization pattern as business travel recovers.”
Fairfax represents a more affordable option compared with Washington, D.C., so meetings and conventions for trade associations, medical societies, scientific specialty societies and “groups like that,” Miller says, are increasingly coming to Fairfax.
“I think part of that is that you have incredible demand, and as a result, the prices of hotels in downtown Washington — and even the [return on investment] — is through the roof,” he adds. “A lot of groups, I think, are looking at the rates down there and saying, ‘Holy cow, maybe we will go to Fairfax to save a few dollars.’”
Guest room rates are lower, taxes are lower and catering costs are lower in Fairfax than in D.C. — as well as overnight parking rates, Miller says. What’s also made Fairfax County an even more popular destination for conventions is the opening of the Metro stop at Washington Dulles International Airport. That station is set to hit its 1 millionth passenger this fall, according to Visit Fairfax.
When looking more closely at the economic impact of conferences, conventions and major meetings across the state, visitor spending can vary according to event type. In Fairfax County, spending associated with attendance at professional conventions, conferences and meetings tends to have the greatest impact.
According to a business travel profile produced for VTC by Longwoods International, the average business traveler to Virginia spent $886 in 2022, and spent just below four nights in a hotel. About 27% of all business travelers came here for conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, leisure travelers last year spent an average $782 per person, staying 3.3 nights in the state.
Dean Miller, national sales manager of groups and meetings for Visit Fairfax, says “demand is off the charts” for conventions and conferences. Photo by Will Schermerhorn
Business vs. leisure
Of course, conventions are not all work. Sports and sci-fi fandom conventions like CSA Shows and GalaxyCon bring in visitors, as do more corporate events like the quantum computing-focused Quantum World Congress held Sept. 26-28 at Capital One Hall in Tysons.
“There’s some serious private money behind this,” Miller says of the Quantum World Congress, which drew about 1,000 people. “There’s some serious governmental money behind this. The people who understand this say that this technology today is about where the internet was in about 1988. This [conference] was a major coup for us to land. We would not have gotten in had we not had the hall, which is right next to a Metro stop … [with] Tysons’ hotel and restaurant infrastructure to support it.”
In Richmond, when comparing the economic impact of large events that draw crowds of 10,000 to 15,000 people, sports tournaments have the highest level of spending, says Jerrine Lee, vice president of sales for Richmond Region Tourism.
In the Richmond region, the USA Softball of Virginia Tournament and the Basketball Small College National Championships bring in many fans, with sports tourism overall accounting for 68% of the region’s group bookings, according to Richmond Region Tourism’s 2022 economic impact report.
Some sports fans also see family and friends or visit other attractions while attending tournaments. VTC reports that local spending for all tourism across the state was up by 21% last year.
When comparing a citywide convention, which requires simultaneous use of hotels, convention space and other venues, such as the Virginia Society of Association Executives’ Fall Conference and Expo, with a comic book, science fiction or film convention, citywide attendees will spend more on lodging — $400,000 versus $300,000. But fandom attendees spend more on food and beverages — $420,000 versus $270,000 — per event, Lee adds. That’s according to the Destinations International Event Impact calculator, which Richmond Region Tourism uses to “represent a conservative portrayal of the economic impact of events,” she says.
The 2022 economic impact report for RRT showed that meetings, conventions and tournaments brought in $113 million last year, with 309,383 estimated attendees.
Out in the Roanoke/New River Valley region, sports tourism generates great economic impact for Salem, says Carey Harveycutter, the city’s director of tourism. Overall, the economic impact each year for championship events in the Roanoke Valley runs between $1.05 million and $4 million, he adds. This includes the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) football championship hosted in November at the Salem Football Stadium, as well as the NCAA Division III men’s and women’s soccer championships. These tournaments can draw between 800 to 6,000 people, Harveycutter says.
“The impact [of those events] is on the whole Virginia’s Blue Ridge region,” he explains. Visitors will “come into town for two nights, stay in our hotels, in our restaurants and visit attractions.”
Neither Radford University nor the University of Virginia had to look far for collaborators on projects that have altered their campus footprints.
The universities called on their own foundations to push forward the construction of two new on-campus hotels — The Highlander Hotel Radford and The Forum Hotel at U.Va. — and an upcoming hotel and conference center in Charlottesville. Both opened in April.
The Highlander has 124 rooms, a rooftop restaurant and more than 6,000 square feet of meeting space, as well as halls adorned with artwork by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and other accomplished artists from the Radford University Foundation’s collection.
The Forum, a Kimpton property at U.Va.’s Darden School of Business, provides 20,000 square feet of room for conferences and meetings, 198 guest rooms, a steak house and a craft-beer bar. A third property — the Virginia Guesthouse and Conference Center — is scheduled to open at U.Va. in 2025 with 214 rooms and 25,000 square feet of meeting space, according to U.Va. Foundation spokesperson Katie Murphy. The 220,000-square-foot building will be along the Emmet/Ivy Corridor, near the forthcoming Karsh Institute of Democracy and the School of Data Science.
Leaders at both schools say the new hotels provide a welcoming entry point to their campuses.
“For some people, [The Forum] will absolutely be what they experience first,” said Ashley Williams, CEO of Darden Executive Education and Lifelong Learning. “It’s a reflection of U.Va. and a reflection of Darden, and we were very thoughtful about what this needs to provide in a way that’s consistent with the educational mission and the mission across our Grounds.”
Although U.Va.’s foundation owns and operates the Boar’s Head Resort, The Forum is a new type of venture since it’s on the university’s Grounds and is focused on accommodating visitors to Darden and its neighbor, the U.Va. School of Law. It’s also Kimpton’s first on-campus hotel and offers classroom space and housing for students pursuing MBAs.
The new hotel’s property also includes a 6-acre arboretum that ties back to the interests of university founder Thomas Jefferson, as does the hotel’s Jeffersonian architectural style.
As for Radford’s Highlander hotel, named for the university’s mascot, it offers visitors much-needed lodging for athletic events — even football games at Virginia Tech.
John Cox, CEO of the Radford University Foundation, which manages university-owned real estate, says the Highlander has already received an uptick in weekend bookings for Tech’s home games, and the Forum is only a half-mile walk to U.Va.’s John Paul Jones Arena, home of the Cavaliers’ basketball teams.
“Athletics will be a big driver of interest,” Cox says. “The hotel is generating a fair amount of excitement on campus and in the community.”
Elsewhere across the state, plenty of hotels are being built or revamped. Here are some of the highlights:
Central Virginia
In October, the Omni Charlottesville Hotel debuted its $15 million renovation of 199 guest rooms and six suites,plus dining areas — including a new restaurant and bar, The Conservatory — and 14,000 square feet of meeting space, which includes three new flexible meeting rooms and a private dining venue.
Its opening is a few months off, but the historic Hotel Petersburg is set to reopen in April 2024 after a $14 million renovation. Vacant since a fire in the 1960s, the hotel will feature 68 guest rooms and a rooftop bar.
Hampton Roads
Moxy Virginia Beach Oceanfront, Marriott’s hotel brand geared toward millennials, opened in June and includes a small meeting and event space that can accommodate about 30 people, as well as the Belvedere South Coffee Shop and Diner, a revival of the classic Virginia Beach restaurant demolished in 2020.
In February, Embassy Suites Virginia Beach Oceanfront Resort opened as the third and final part of the $350 million Cavalier Resort Virginia Beach, owned by Gold Key | PHR. A Hilton property, the hotel has 157 suites, restaurants, pools, and a fitness center. In total, the Cavalier Resort has 547 guest rooms and more than 40,000 square feet of meeting and event spaces.
Northern Virginia
A renovation of the nearly 100-year-old George Mason Hotel in Alexandria’s Old Town neighborhood is scheduled to be completed in early 2024. Operated by Aparium Hotel Group, the newly dubbed Hotel Heron will include 134 rooms, a restaurant, a rooftop bar and a cafe.
In April, the Residence Inn by Marriott Manassas Battlefield Park completed a refresh of its 107 guest suites, meeting rooms and exterior. Near historic Manassas, the Warrenton Training Center and the Manassas Regional Airport, the hotel is owned by Apple Hospitality REIT in Richmond.
Shenandoah Valley
The Omni Homestead Resort in Bath County unveiled its $150 million expansion and renovation in October. The update includes a new 4,000-square-foot event pavilion and a revamp of the resort’s 72,000 square feet of meeting space. Theater 1923, Homestead’s century-old space for keynote speakers, has converted its seating from theater seats to sofas, lounge chairs and side tables, and added new audiovisual technology. Also, the Warm Springs Pools, which were closed in 2017, reopened in December 2022 after a $4.6 million restoration.
Roanoke Valley
Local furniture retailer Txtur transformed a 115-year-old historic firehouse in Roanoke into a boutique hotel, Fire Station One, which opened in January. In addition to serving as a showroom for Txtur’s furniture, the hotel provides a private meetings and events space, the Bunk Room, along with seven guest rooms. The red brick building sat vacant for 15 years before its refurbishment.
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