Convention Center Fever Is Spreading in Northwest Arkansas

Fayetteville city officials are preparing for an Aug. 5 election on their proposal for a new exhibition hall. Private developers have begun work on new hotel and convention facilities in Bentonville while civic leaders in Benton County discuss the idea of a 5,000-seat facility. Two new facilities are planned on the University of Arkansas campus – at least one of which will be available for rental.

Meanwhile, the area’s only existing convention center, the Holiday Inn Northwest Arkansas Convention Center, has a 60 percent vacancy rate.

The Fayetteville referendum is on whether to issue up to $6.95 million worth of bonds for a town center, but the real questions may be whether Northwest Arkansas can support so many facilities and whether regionalism takes a backseat to home-town desires.

Not surprisingly, one person who doubts the viability of all these new facilities is Bill Bretches, general manager of the Holiday Inn/Northwest Arkansas Convention Center and a certified hotel administrator. Obviously, more meeting facilities would be competition to the Springdale center, but Bretches acknowledges that’s free enterprise.

He suspects that proponents of some of the other facilities don’t understand the intricacies of operating convention facilities. Open almost two years, the Springdale convention center has an occupancy rate of around 40 percent. That means a vacancy rate of about 60 percent – despite a full-time staff that continually markets the facility.

Bretches says it’s the accompanying hotel facilities – the Holiday Inn and Hampton Suites – that pay for the convention center.

“We make money in our rooms. That division financially supports the whole complex,” Bretches says.

“There’s an old adage: You may make your money in rooms, but food and beverage sells the rooms. Now to get more food and beverage, you build a convention center. The idea is it’s the regional aspects, the out-of-town guests you have to house overnight for two or three nights … that’s how you pay that thing back.”

Bretches says John Q. Hammons, the hotel’s owner, built the center because of the out-of-town visitors he expected.

“There’s no way Mr. Hammons would have built such a complete structure to that quality for strictly and expecting a local-market-only support.”