Airport hotel plan is another money grab
It is flawed logic to assume that if you build a new airport
hotel, tourists will come to fill it. Tourists will not come to
town for an airport hotel. They'll come for the destination and
what it has to offer, not merely for the fact that there's an
airport hotel. Airport hotels are for the business traveler,
those staying overnight while on their way to somewhere else for
a business meeting in a place convenient for all those flying in
to attend.
Sorry, but Key West is not conveniently on the way to anywhere
else. You have to want to get here; it is a place you must want
to travel to on purpose. ... No one goes to an airport hotel
because they want to.
A hotel at Key West International Airport, or any other area in
town for that matter, will have zero positive impact on the
economy before, during or immediately after a storm, unless you
need more rooms available for the hoards of alphabet soup news
media that descend at those times. As it stands, during a storm
there should be plenty of rooms available as almost all the
tourists have left -- which is what creates the economic hit in
the first place. So why would we need more rooms during those
times? To sit empty? That will help the economy?
Do we need a hotel at the airport for use as a convention
center? That's already in the works elsewhere, so that argument
fails. For use as an emergency hurricane shelter? This argument
has been used for other hotel proposals also, with a very mixed
public reception, so let's not try that again so soon. A hotel
is a hotel, let's not call it something else with the hope of
justifying it.
The question that really needs to be answered is this: Just how
often throughout a year is Key West fully booked, with no
available rooms anywhere? Fantasy Fest, maybe during the winter
holidays, and during what other times? The occasional weekend or
special event, perhaps? Certainly not continuously, all year
long. Certainly not so often that a big new hotel's worth of
overpriced, half-booked rooms are justifiable.
Building a "Field of Dreams" hotel and hoping that the tourists
will mystically arrive to fill it and lavish their money around
town is not something to hang your economic future on. Tourists
are not like water, rushing in to fill any available open
spaces.
And speaking of water, which is in fact the Keys' economic
lifeblood, the idea of an airport hotel bringing in tourists and
helping to resurrect a flat economy is about as dumb as
promoting new offshore oil drilling to help lower gasoline
prices next week or even next year, while cloaking your
intentions in the patriotic garb of energy independence. It's a
money-grab in either case, because some people sense an
opportunity for them where none existed before.
Gordon Petersen
Visalia, Calif. |
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