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Banquet Wars

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From weddings to business retreats and parties to fundraisers, Springfield plays host to thousands of events each year. With some hotels already booking into the next decade, the battle for customers is heating up.

The Queen City’s larger event venues handle upwards of 1,000 events annually and tens of thousands of guests. Comparatively small, downtown banquet property The Old Glass Place is finding its footing.

“We’ve got 26 events booked between now and the end of the year,” said Roger Malarkey, venue manager for the 15,000-square-foot meeting space. “In October, we’re booked every weekend.”

Including the $12 million O’Reilly Family Event Center, more than $30 million in event properties have opened over the past four years, according to Springfield Business Journal research. The latest addition is three new meeting spaces this summer at the $13 million Hotel Vandivort.

Malarkey said The Old Glass Place, which can hold around 550 guests and hosts around five events per month, doesn’t offer its own catering services – leaving food options to guests. Rental prices start at $1,750, and vary depending on the day of the week and time of the year. He said events are booked into 2016, with weddings leading the charge; they’re booked almost a year out.

“It is competitive, but it’s a good thing,” Malarkey said of the market, adding bookings are beating projections at this point. “It keeps us on our toes.”

Missy Handyside, general manager for the Ramada Plaza Hotel & Oasis Convention Center, said meeting prices vary greatly depending on how much room is needed. Meeting prices also can be reduced or eliminated depending on needed catering. Prices per plate range from $13.95 to $34.95.

“We work with a group’s budget,” Handyside said, adding the hotel and convention center offers 11 meeting rooms totaling 30,000 square feet of event space. “The room with the stage, which we call the Grand Ballroom, that’s our most popular and that holds 300 to 500 people on average.”

Looking forward, she said the Ramada Oasis has events booked out as far as 2021.

New digs
From the addition of Bass Pro Shops’ White River Conference Center, to the revamped and restyled Ramada Oasis, to the updated University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center, options are in every pocket of the city.

However, according to one local hotel veteran, meeting spaces are often developed to generate more profitable business: overnight stays.

Hotelier Gordon Elliott of Elliott Lodging Ltd., who participated in SBJ’s August CEO Roundtable on the convention and visitors industry, said event and meeting spaces often are a loss leader for hotel properties. Elliott has transformed several Springfield properties, including the Best Western Route 66 Rail Haven motel, a north-side Candlewood Suites, the Lamplighter Inn and Greenstay Hotel & Suites.

“I have looked at a lot of financial statements in my day and have yet to find a meeting space hotel that made any money. The profit is all in the rooms. That’s the reason you have meeting space,” he said. “I’m more than happy to see somebody go out there and put the bucks down and have a great facility, but there is a lot more gravy in selling rooms.”

Handyside said the Ramada Oasis, which owner Robert Low, founder and president of Prime Inc., renovated for $5.6 million in 2012, these days garners over 1,000 events per year – double its prerenovation total.

“Convention space puts heads in beds, and heads in beds is where most of your money is. However, the unique thing about us is we had to show the owner this was going to be a profitable venture on its own. So, we are probably a little unique in that we operate on two sets of budgets, two sets of financials,” Handyside said. “We get a clear picture of what the convention center does, and I don’t know that a lot of hotels do it that way.”

Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Hospitality Management LLC, which owns the Hilton Garden Inn and the DoubleTree Hotel – currently preparing for expansion to the north that would double event capacity to more than 600 guests from the current 270 maximum – said it can be good to keep dining or banquet and hotel bookings separate.

“We operate our Houlihan’s at DoubleTree as separate business models and they are both very profitable independently,” he said during the CEO Roundtable, adding both catering and event spaces and hotel rooms work to meet guests’ needs. “It’s synergistic. You can’t have one without the other.”

New kid on the block
The latest entering the Springfield banquet and event market, Hotel Vandivort opened last month with a 2,800-square-foot ballroom. Catering sales manager Jen Nelson said the room is the biggest and most popular of its meeting spaces and can seat up to 190. The Walnut Street space already has weddings booked through September 2016 and 80 to 100 events booked through the rest of the year. Rental prices range from $1,800 to $2,500.

“It just takes bringing people in and showing them the facilities and most people are won over by how beautiful it is and all the technology, as well,” Nelson said.

Besides the ballroom, Hotel Vandivort aims to set itself apart though high-tech spaces in a posh downtown atmosphere. The hotel has an 850-square-foot Cornerstone Room that can hold 50 and a 250-square-foot Pillar Room for up to 16, and features a 90-inch flat-screen TV.

Lori Zeppenfeldt, general manager of the White River Conference Center, said the cost to host an event from one of its three banquet rooms – which together comprise nearly 15,000 square feet – can vary widely depending on factors such as time of year and number of guests, but prices per plate range from $15.95 to $55.95. In 2015, she expects well over 30,000 guests attending more than 500 events. The market, Zeppenfeldt said, is competitive as-is, but she does see an unmet demand for large gatherings.

“I don’t think there’s room for a lot more. I think there is room for a larger venue because there are a lot of folks and charities that want to hit that 1,000-mark. And there are very few places that can do that,” she said.

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