Can you explain? Just curious what you mean by "fragmenting the market." Do you mean that all the hotels should be in one area/quadrant of DT?
Oh I've been harping on this in a couple different threads lately. Adding small hotels to the DT scene is useful on a superficial level in that there are now more rooms added to DT inventory, but less useful in a strategic sense in that they don't encourage the growth of group occupancy.
Think of it this way: hotels divide their business roughly in thirds: 1) retail transient, or individual room sales to individual travelers, via Priceline, Hotwire, call-in and walk-in 2) business transient, or negotiated rates with local businesses in exchange for a set amount of room nights per yer (or 6 mos, or per quarter), and 3) group rooms, or committed limited term room blocks that range from citywide conventions to traveling amateur sports teams.
So on any given day, the total room inventory is divided between those three segments, and commitments per day vary. On weekdays a given hotel downtown might commit 60 of its 100 rooms to business transient, 30 to group, and 10 to retail, while on the weekends the split would change to 60 group, 30 retail, 10 business. Etc.
Point being that when thinking about DT as a unified environment for bringing in the larger conventions, adding 100 limited service rooms does virtually nothing for the larger strategic picture. They'll commit only a portion of their rooms to group. Likewise, converting the Old City Hall into 200 upscale rooms sounds fantastic on some levels, on others it's less constructive than if we'd decided to bulldoze the whole lot and put up a 600 room Sheraton. It's the difference between committing 100 rooms to group vs 300.
As it stands, some of the larger conventions that Tulsa could compete for must split their room block at two or three (or four, or five, etc) different properties all around DT, and that alone could be a deal-breaker for groups that need more centralized control over their agenda.
Of course this is not to say that a new hotel anywhere in the IDL isn't great news; and it's even better if it's new construction that's done well and will help build the ecosystem in the Brady. Don't get me wrong about this; it's excellent news, but I just wish we had a more concerted plan for making us a destination.
