Middle Class Shrinks in Venues, Too

We've been writing about venues quite a bit lately, with the release of our Major Exhibit Hall Directory this month and our semiannual report on convention center construction coming up next month — not to mention the ongoing building boom we cover day in and day out.

Some of what we've been writing has me wondering whether there's a growing gap between the rich and the poor ... rich and poor convention space renters, that is.

Last week, Las Vegas Contributing Editor Lisa Plummer wrote a Page One story on the city's ongoing construction boom (see Aug. 13, "Vegas Remains an Expanding Universe"). A focus of the story was the bandwagon, chartered a few years ago by Steve Wynn, barrelling up the high-end road toward ever more luxurious — and pricey — properties.

In a few weeks, another of Tradeshow Week's Las Vegas contributing editors, Diane Taylor, will take a look at the flip side, covering some of the city's more affordable, classic properties. An example is the Riviera Hotel & Casino, which earns its keep by catering to the SMERF (social, military, educational, religious and fraternal) market, offering clients lots of amenities for little money.

What I don't see much of these days, at least around Sin City, are proposals for new mid-market space, in particular at hotels. I'm talking about nice, well-run properties with good service that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Granted, the Las Vegas Convention Center will still be an affordable tradeshow facility, even if its planned upgrade fulfills all the upscale promises it's made. But where are the mid-market hotels to go with it? In five years, will conventioneers here have to choose between aging, smoke-infested casino hotels and crystal-chandeliered, Italian-designed resorts that charge $500 per night for a room?

The high-end-or-low-end phenomenon is not limited to Las Vegas. Consider what Orlando/Orange County CVB President and CEO Gary Sain told Assistant Editor Stephanie Corbin in our Aug. 6 issue (see "A New CEO in Town"). He said, in so many words, that the city is continuing its push into the luxury market, emphasizing the spas, golf, shopping, dining and other tastes of sophistication it offers the business traveler.

The city has at least two hotels opening in the vicinity of the Orange County Convention Center that have been billed as upscale. They, of course, are at the other end of the spectrum from Orlando's leisure market: mainly cheap hotels for families visiting amusement parks.

Maybe this is just a first-tier market phenomenon. There are probably plenty of mid-market venues out there for conventioneers to choose from. But you certainly don't see many ads boasting, "Come see us. We're middle of the road!" Instead, everybody's selling themselves as either "upscale" or "affordable."

If this trend continues, it will be interesting to see how the industry's convention cities — like the nation's urban centers — find a place for their hard-working middle class.