Bad Development ideas never die.

CultureMap (presumably, using their own pictures) provides an update on Downtown Houston's latest boondoggle:


It's full speed ahead for new convention center hotel and it's going to be Texas big, Ralph Bivins, CultureMap

Plans to build a second convention hotel in downtown Houston are moving ahead as organizers have begun an official search to locate a hotel developer.

The hotel, to be built just north of Discovery Green park near the George R. Brown Convention Center, is expected to have 1,000 rooms, making it one of the largest hotels in Texas.

<...>

Officials say Houston has an inadequate number of downtown hotel rooms, so it is eliminated from consideration on the shopping list of the nation’s largest meetings and conventions.

Unwritten in the article is Downtown Houston's current hotel occupancy rate which, for '09 and '10 (the last two years with any good data) were hovering around 55% Of course, Houston's biggest 'build a hotel cheerleader' PKF consulting, guaranteed that things would be better come 2011.

Also left unsaid is the REAL reason Houston is eliminated from the largest conventions:

Las Vegas and Orlando.


Houston could have a Million hotel rooms and people still would choose to go to these two destinations for their conventions. The convention battle is over, resort destinations have won. City's that still try to chase the white dragon of large convention business are only fooling themselves, bankrupting the treasury and enriching the middle-men who facilitate these types of deals.

In other words: The Houston Way.