There appears to be a growing trend in the expanding world of campus conference centers.
Colleges and universities that have never before considered the
benefits of operating a profitable establishment are suddenly looking
at conference centers and hotels as potential sources of support for
their more traditional programs. And some institutions that have been
operating such properties themselves are turning management of the
facilities over to companies experienced in the hospitality industry.
Analysts watching the trend say that there is lots of money to be
made in the relatively untapped market of college- and university-owned
hotels and conference centers — troth for the schools and for the
management companies.
“It is definitely a trend — not only to manage them, but to
develop them as well,” said Rachel Roginsky, a Boston-based hospitality
industry consultant who works closely with colleges and universities
and is a member of Pinnacle Advisory Group. “Conference business at
universities is pretty strong, and [the universities are] using other
places — other hotels that they are paying money out to. They’d rather
keep the revenue streams in house and possibly make some money.”
A number of factors has contributed to the appearance of conference
centers and hotels on campuses across the United States, according to
people familiar with the industry. They cite increased interest in
executive education, and the wide availability, a decade ago, of
financing for building such facilities. Turning the management of
conference centers and hotels over to the private sector began a few
years ago, when the economy weakened and the hospitality industry
became increasingly competitive.
“The academic world is an excellent world in its own right, but it
doesn’t operate like the hospitality industry,” said Burt Cabanas,
president and chief executive officer of Benchmark Hospitality, a
company based in Texas that manages fourteen privately owned conference
centers and is looking to expand to university-owned conference
centers. “The open-market mentality toward managing those facilities
does not grow in an academic world.”
Meanwhile, other schools are looking at building conference
facilities both to satisfy their own internal demands for professional
meeting space and to provide the sort of executive training that more
and more corporations are offering these days. The University of
Cincinnati, for example, is building a conference center through which
it intends to market its faculty and their availability for executive
education. Construction on the center is to begin this summer.
