Orlando hotel capacity, future demand

[larworth]

Orlando area total park capacity has not increased much since IOA opened. A few minor additions, a few replacements, and a few subtractions (River country, etc). A market often refered to as "saturated" from a visitation standpoint. Yet, it seems area hotel rooms continue to grow and grow.

Recent article was concerned that several new hotels around the new convention center won’t be on-stream as soon as hoped. There are big non-Disney resort projects underway in both Reedy and Bonnet Creek. Disney will open PC next year, and Universal just announced they are starting work on two more on-site hotels.

This could all just be leading to a more intense battle for hotel occupancy. However, the collective wisdom (if such things exist in the real estate market) doesn’t sound like one of Orlando being a “saturated” market. Does this create any optimism about future demand that could help support more park growth?

[Bstanley]

It is interesting that the 'period' of a region's business cycle often seems to be 180 degrees out of phase with demand for some things... Like when I lived in Houston Big Oil would start to boom and developers would start the process of funding, designing, and finally building masses of houses and apartments - and just about the time construction was really booming Big Oil would crash!

I think that with more hotel rooms being available that hotel prices would stay competitive - but I don't imagine it will spur new park development. There were already more than enough hotel rooms in the area for MANY more people than the parks can handle.

[mikek]

i'm not sure but i thought I read that eisner thinks backwards and seesaw the hotels as fat easy cash that the themeparks not needed to keep full. That would explain the huge amount of Disney hotel development on his watch.

So more hotel competition might make park additions more possible. I think (I could be way off so feel free to correct me) Disney probably will have enough rooms once pc opens to house the majority of the folks in the parks. I think o' mikey would just use that to his advantage by throwing curves at offsite guests (waste their time or money somehow)