On Location: New Orleans

May 21, 2003 12:00 PM, By Bob Andelman

It’s been a long day. A really long day.

You’ve been standing on your feet on the trade room floor since 7 a.m., walking from here to there and back, sometimes shifting your weight from one unrelenting foot to the other. The indoor/outdoor carpeting is unforgiving.

But as tired as you are, the last place your back wants to be is reclining on your hotel bed. It’s so hard, you might as well walk a few more hours and collapse of exhaustion on a city street.

Unless, that is, you’re lucky enough to be sleeping in a renovated Sheraton Hotel on one of its new Sweet Sleeper Beds. The chain introduced the Sealy Posturepedic Plush Top mattresses, down pillows, crisp sheets, and duvets as part of its $24 million facelift at the Sheraton New Orleans, and it will convert all of its beds in North America to the new style within 24 months. For many people, these beds are probably more comfortable than whatever they’re sleeping on at home. (The Sheraton bed upgrade follows similar moves at its sister brands, W Hotels and Westin.)

"I slept in the bed last night," said Kimberly Williamson Butler, chief administrative officer for the city of New Orleans, during a press introduction of the Sweet Sleeper. "I wasn’t sure I’d wake up in time to get here."

The beds aren’t the only improvements in New Orleans. Money was spent on renovating all 1,100 of the Sheraton’s rooms, with the help of designers from Ralph Lauren, Holly Hunt, and Williams-Sonoma. Dramatic changes are also evident in the facility’s 90,000 square feet of exhibit space, which features a 30,000-square-foot multipurpose room.

Sheraton New Orleans opened in 1982. At the time, it was the big fish in the city. Since then, however, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Harrah’s Casino, the Warehouse Arts District, and the Riverwalk Marketplace have come on the scene, as well as 22 competing hotels. (In 1984, there were only four hotels.)

Because of that competition, management at the Sheraton New Orleans is rethinking its traditional sales orientation as a primary conduit for citywide meetings.

"What is happening here at the Sheraton is getting ahead of the wave nationally," says J. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau Inc. "We’re going to be the most competitive travel destination for meetings in the country. We’re giving each of our salespeople a new business quota. We want new corporations that haven’t been coming here."

The Sheraton created a formal "French Quarter Connection" marketing agreement with a Marriott across the street and is pursuing its own self-contained, 300-room corporate or 200-room association meeting business, apart from what the Morial Convention Center attracts. Together, the Sheraton and Marriott offer more than 2,200 rooms.

"Medical conventions have always been a key market of New Orleans," says Brett T. Forshag, director group sales at the Sheraton. "Now we’re trying to penetrate it vertically for small meetings and board of directors meetings. We want to get out the word that we want that business. We can negotiate. The incentive market is something we’ve never been able to attract. But now we have a TPC (Tournament Players Club) course opening in spring 2004. That’s huge for the incentive market. We expect our renovation will help us with that market."

The newly renovated Napoleon Exposition Hall and Ballroom (formerly known as the Pontchartrain) is 30,000 square feet in area but can be quickly reconfigured into 12 breakout rooms or 36 different permutations. It can also seat 2,500 people for banquets. —Bob Andelman

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