High hotel rates anger Tupelo visitors
By Larry Thomas -- Furniture Today, March 6, 2005
Tupelo, Miss. — High hotel rates — a common complaint among some visitors to the High Point market — also are raising the ire of some Tupelo Furniture Market attendees.
In an article in a Tupelo-based newspaper, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, several buyers complained about the high cost of staying in Tupelo. Research by the newspaper found that seven of 10 hotels that were surveyed raised rates 25% to 98% during market week.
The buyers have a strong ally in their battle against high rates — the people who run the Tupelo market. Market President Bill Cleveland was sharply critical of the hotel operators.
"If we don't get it fixed, it will kill us," he told the Daily Journal. "We have to control it."
In a later interview with Furniture/Today, Cleveland didn't deny making those statements, but said he believes visitors to Tupelo's summer market, which opens Aug. 18, will get some relief.
"I see a lot of progress being made in that area," he said. "I think we'll see a nice improvement (in rates) by the August market."
Cleveland said he's had several meetings with hotel owners since the end of the February market, and he believes many of them are beginning to understand the dilemma the Tupelo market faces. Its next show begins just three weeks after the inaugural Las Vegas furniture market, where market organizers are promoting hotel rooms starting at $52 a night.
At last month's market, several exhibitors said they feared attendance at the August show would decline sharply because so many industry buyers, manufacturers and sales representatives are planning to go to Las Vegas.
Cleveland said the Tupelo market may expand its practice of buying blocks of hotel rooms and reselling them to retail buyers at reasonable rates. If those rooms aren't sold by the market's housing service, they are returned to the hotel's inventory, but the market will still pay the hotel operator for any that aren't sold to "walk-up" customers who don't have reservations.
"The industry is getting a lot of pressure locally to get these rates down," Cleveland said.
The Daily Journal's survey showed that Tupelo's Best Western raised its nightly rates from $55 the week before market to $85 during market. The Red Roof Inn went from $44.99 to $99 during the same period, and the Days Inn went from $48 to $90, according to the newspaper survey.
Three hotels surveyed, however, didn't raise their rates. The newspaper identified them as the Courtyard by Marriott, Holiday Inn Express and Economy Inn.
Days Inn owner Mike Patel defended his increase, saying it was simply the normal course of doing business.
"We bump it up a little bit. But we're not like High Point, where they charge $200 for a room," Patel told the newspaper.
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High hotel rates anger Tupelo visitors
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