Two Hotels With Meeting Space Go Up Near Disney World
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 7/10/2006
Hilton Hotels will build two new hotels — one of them a Waldorf-Astoria — with 145,000 square feet of meeting space adjacent to Orlando's Walt Disney World Resort.
Crews will break ground later this year, and Hilton expects construction to be completed by summer 2009 on the 1,000-room Hilton and the 500-room Waldorf in a new resort development called Bonnet Creek.
While the individual hotels will have limited meeting space themselves (the Hilton, 25,000 sq. ft., and the Waldorf, 11,000 sq. ft.), they will share a conference center with 115,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, including a 36,000 sq. ft. ballroom. The hotels will also share a spa and fitness center, as well as 5,000 sq. ft. of specialty retail space.
While the Waldorf-Astoria Collection, managed by Hilton, now has five properties (including the flagship New York hotel), the Orlando project will be the first one built from the ground up. The other four are properties that have been renamed.
The two hotels will be part of the larger Bonnet Creek resort development, a 482-acre project that will eventually include 2,400 hotel rooms, 1,600 time share units and a golf course. It will be in the vicinity of a number of Walt Disney World attractions.
