Tampa Bay GOP, hoteliers want new deal on national convention
About 100 hotels from in the St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay area contracted with the Republican National Party officials in August of last year for more than 15,000 rooms. The stipulation: hoteliers would offer at least five nights for the upcoming national convention to select a presidential candidate.
“Now, hotel executives worry their rooms will bring in much less cash. Not only do convention officials want to cut hotel rates, a fee hotels pay to help cover convention operating costs would jump from $30 per room to 10 percent of each guest's hotel bill,” reported the St. Petersburg Times.
"There were a couple hundred folks in the room slightly gasping,'' Ron Alicandro, general manager of the Westin Tampa Bay, said of the meeting where the dispute was brought up. "We've all got signed contracts. None of us can understand it.''
Each hotel agreed to block 90 percent of their rooms for convention-goers, which meant they turned down other business that might have come in for the same week.
Organizers now say the prices established a year ago – when Michael Steele was chairman of the Republican National Committee – were too high.
"We want to find rates that are good for both parties, all the visitors as well as the hoteliers,'' James Davis, a spokesman for Republic National Committee's convention planning unit, told the paper.
Hotel managers say the unusual move is costing them money.
The TradeWinds Island Resorts property in St. Pete Beach expects to lose about $150,000, hotel president Keith Overton told the paper. The TradeWinds had already set a bargain $158 nightly rate and won't change it, the story says.
By David Wilkening
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