PORTLAND-After a soft year in the local hotel market caused by five new hotels in the past four years, some positive whispers can be heard. “I'm hearing a lot of good reports about downtown over the last few months,” says Ed Dundon, a local hotel broker who has handled many of the larger hotel transaction in recent years. “Business has really been quite good as it relates to previous year.”
The same can be said for the suburban west side, Dundon tells GlobeSt. “I'm being told that things are better out there than the previous year,” he says. “Rooms are quite tied up during the week; the problem is weekends, there's a lot of competition for weekend rooms.”
The market is still trying to absorb more than 1,000 new hotel rooms in past 48 months, not to mention numerous renovations. The new supply pushed average annual occupancy rates in downtown Portland from 69.4% in 1999 to 65.7% last year, and pushed daily room rates to $105 from $110. Suburban room rates slid to $80 from $83 on a drop in occupancy from 64.1% to 62.3%.
Demand will have to pick up more quickly to handle what's coming. About 442 more hotel rooms are scheduled to come online. The Hilton's addition of a second hotel tower caddy corner from its existing location will add 321 of those rooms.
The biggest recent hotel transaction in the region is the $42 million sale of Skamania Lodge, a 195-room lodge and conference center east of Portland on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Lend Lease Real Estate Investments of Sydney, Australia sold the resort to Dolce International of Monvale, NJ and DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners LP of New York.
The resort's name is now Dolce Skamania Lodge. The new owners plan to spend about $15 million adding 59 guest rooms and another 15,000 sf of meeting space, bringing total meeting space to 35,000 sf. The expansion, already approved by the Columbia River Gorge Commission, is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2002.
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.
Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
*May exclude premium content© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
