Heartbreak hotels.

• Author: Herbst, Laura
• Position: Hotel vacancies high in North Carolina - Real Estate

Heartbreak hotels

The Triangle has a lot going for it -- a lot of vacant office space, a lot of unsold single-family homes, a lot of unleased apartments and shopping centers.

It's also got a lot of hotel rooms, and a lot of them are empty -- nearly half of them, most nights.

So what are hotel and motel managers doing about it? A lot of them are resorting to the industry equivalent of guerrilla tactics.

One beleaguered manager has started cruising competitors' parking lots late at night, searching for cars with company names on them. The next day, he calls the companies and offers them a special rate.

The Radisson Plaza, the largest hotel downtown, is doing something it has never done before. It's trying to drum up business by giving free "familiarization trips" to meeting planners and corporate executives. General Manager James E. Hobbs says the hotel handed out 1,500 complimentary room nights during the first half of the year. In the past, the Radisson has only offered free site-inspection trips to meeting planners already doing business with the hotel.

Reflecting the nationwide over-supply, some Marriots are letting guests stay Thursdays and Sundays at its $69 weekend rate ($44 off standard). "Those are slow nights," says Joann E. Ballard, director of marketing for the Marriott Crabtree Valley. "We're doing more discounting for a night with a hole in it."

And when managers do get lots of business, they squeeze the last penny out of it. Larry Dewitt, manager of the budget-minded Sundown Inn on Capital Boulevard, was delighted to have a full house the night of a Grateful Dead concert. When a customer checked out early, he cleaned the room himself and re-rented it, boosting occupancy to 102 percent. "I hate turning anyone away," he says. "I'd put them in my office if they'd sleep there."

There are two very simple reasons for the troubles in the Triangle hospitality market: years of overbuilding and a slowdown in economic growth. "There was this boom mentality back when things were really going strong with Research Triangle Park and all of the office parks in the Triangle area were just going to town," says Geoff Kirkland, director of management advisory services for consultant Laventhol & Horwath in Charlotte, which has clients in the Triangle. "Possibly, part of that was driven by the fact that American Airlines was going to come to Raleigh for a hub. ... It hasn't had as much impact as it may [eventually] have.

"All of those things...