Newberg, Oregon is the site for one of the newest lifestyle resorts in the United States. Since its opening in September 2009, The Allison Inn & Spa, a Preferred Hotels & Resorts member, has established itself as the premier destination resort in Oregon’s renowned wine region in the Willamette Valley. Both the resort and spa were individually featured in the Conde Nast’s Traveler 2010 Hot List. Demonstrating that luxury can also be “green,” the resort was awarded LEED Gold certification by U.S. Green Building Council. The Allison’s development team recognized early that a spa would be a key ingredient for the resort’s overall success. The fruitful result is an integrated, full-service luxury spa that provides the perfect complement to the Inn’s winning formula of relaxed style, comfort, and service.

Professional meeting planners - - deferring, cancelling or drastically cutting back on both size and frequency of meetings for more than a year now - - are scheduling more site inspections and booking much larger groups for 2011 and 2012. This was confirmed during a long interview conducted this month with John Washko, V.P. Sales & Marketing, The Broadmoor, Colorado Springs, CO.

It started back in 2005 when Royal Caribbean Cruise Line added rock climbing walls, mini-golf and ice-skating rinks to their cruise ships. In 2006, they launched the industry’s largest passenger ship, Freedom of the Seas, with an onboard surf simulator called a FlowRider and an H2O Zone aqua park. And the race began. In 2009, Carnival Cruise Line added an aqua park called WaterWorks to its Ecstasy Cruise Ship at Galveston TX and its Dream Cruise Ship at Port Canaveral FL. Last December, RCCI launched its newest big ship, Oasis of the Seas, with an H2O Zone and two FlowRiders.

H&LA's summer 2010 survey of indoor and outdoor waterpark resorts in the U.S. and Canada indicates that the number of waterpark resorts continues to climb, although at a much slower pace than in previous years. In this year's update, we have separated resorts with indoor waterparks from resorts with outdoor waterparks because they represent two distinct types of waterpark resorts.

The big question for 2010 is as follows: After two years of the frozen tundra in lending, are the capital markets beginning to thaw? Amid a plethora of opinions and sentiments, both positive and negative, where does reality come into play? Yes, the capital markets are beginning to thaw. Some financing has become available and transaction volume has increased, but this has been mainly for distressed properties. There has still not been any movement for new construction lending in 2010, just as there was not any significant new lending in 2009. The bottom line is that financing a new construction hotel and indoor waterpark resort remains extremely difficult.

In today’s rough and highly competitive hotel climate, when senior managers find themselves making budget cuts at the line-item level, it’s often tempting to drastically cut or eliminate public relations expenses. But this is exactly the wrong approach to take. The right PR agency can help put a property on the map and reignite and extend awareness. PR can also help a property differentiate itself from among many competing brands, introduce the product to revenue-rich niche markets, and turn on the spigot for much-needed cash. PR is an essential tool to help grow new business and spur word-of-mouth in just the right circles.

We made it through the holidays celebrating responsibly—as those alcoholic beverage commercials remind us so well—but still with that dark cloud hanging overhead, that inescapable awareness that the industry’s tough times will no doubt carry over throughout 2010 and possibly beyond.

Unless we have been living under a rock for the past year, we would know that the world’s economy has plummeted and that the hospitality industry worldwide has experienced an unprecedented drop in RevPAR, the primary indicator of profitability. As the world is adjusting to this new economy, the hospitality industry is searching for ways to recover.According to Smith Travel Research (August 13, 2009 article by Chad Church), “The outlook for 2010 looks slightly better than 2009, but the industry still is expected to end 2010 with decreases in all three key metrics. Occupancy is projected to end 2010 with a 0.6-percent decrease, ADR is forecasted to end the year with a 3.4-percent decrease, and RevPAR is expected to end with a 4.0-percent decline.”

Meeting planners are faced with the same economic challenges confronting hotels today - - booking “effective” events at the least possible costs - - and as a result are “flexing” their negotiating leverage and aggressively seeking room rate concessions, according to a recent meeting planner survey conducted by PKF Hospitality Research and Conventions South Magazine.

A recent article (November 18, 2009) in the New York Times headlined “A Hole on Park Avenue: The Site Where the Drake Stood is Likely to Remain Idle for Years.” The 56th Street and Park Avenue location is “inarguably the best development site in the country and possibly the world”, according to Woody Heller, an executive managing director at Studley, a real estate brokerage company.