Few Super Bowl bookings seen at LI hotels
Long Island hotels will be watching from the sidelines at the surge in bookings from Super Bowl XLVIII and the weeklong slate of events leading to it, industry insiders say.
"There will be a few hotels in western Nassau that will pick up a few rooms, but that's about it," said R. Moke McGowan, president of the Long Island Convention & Visitors Bureau and Sports Commission. Other than that benefit, he said, "We don't expect any bump at all."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), citing the National Football League, has pegged the total economic impact of the Feb. 2 game at $600 million for the New York State and New York City economies, with hotels, restaurants and bars among the beneficiaries.
But McGowan said that most Long Island hotels are too distant from the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., where the game will be played, to be considered by Super Bowl attendees, and rooms remain available in New York City.
"Even though it's just across the river, there's a lot of hotels between here and there and a fair number of rooms at decent prices," he said. "We might be a bridge too far."
Making the prospects for Nassau and Suffolk county hotels even more distant, Mike Johnston, president of the Long Island Hospitality and Leisure Association, said that in the last five years, the inventory of hotel rooms in Queens has increased.
"I don't see a whole lot of play due to the Super Bowl," he said.
Hotel occupancy in Nassau and Suffolk counties was 66.6 percent in November 2013, according to the latest figures from research firm STR Global. That was down nearly 20 percentage points from the same period in 2012, due to the surge in hotel occupancy at the end of 2012 after superstorm Sandy blew through the Island and wrecked homes.
Still, at least one hotel in Great Neck, in the western reaches of Nassau County, is beginning to see a bump in bookings for Super Bowl week.
Franklin Manchester, general manager of the Inn at Great Neck, said that the hotel has been fielding phone and online reservations that are not typical of its corporate and event-driven clientele.
"We're seeing more of the transient guest bookings," he said. "We're seeing more people who aren't affiliated with corporations or social groups" like weddings, he said.
The customers likely are not Super Bowl ticket holders, he said, but guests pushed to the suburbs by the relatively high prices of hotel rooms in the city.
"The prices of the New York City hotels are going to draw people this way," he said.
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