The hottest trend in hotel development is condo hotels. “They're all over the place,” says Patrick Ford, president, Lodging Econometrics, Portsmouth, N.H., including major convention cities such as Chicago (Trump Hotel and Tower) and Orlando, Fla. (Westin Imagine Orlando Hotel).

With condo hotels, some or all of the units are owned by individuals, who essentially buy the use of the room as a vacation spot for two to four weeks a year. Developers like the model because it provides a front-end revenue stream, which lowers the initial investment and makes it easier to borrow, says Ford.

When owners are not using them, units are turned over to the management company, which rents them to guests. If the owner sells the unit, the agreement carries over to the new owner.

The individual owners, in most cases, cannot add any personal touches to the space, as it is required to look like other rooms within the brand's portfolio. In some instances, the owners get a cut of the profits made off the room, but that is not typical, nor is it the expectation of owners. “The investment in a condo hotel unit is not designed to provide competitive returns,” says Ford. “It's designed for your utility.”

Because the construction of public areas, such as meeting space, adds a layer of complexity (and cost) to individual owner agreements, you won't see many self-contained meetings held at hotels that are completely owned by individuals. But at condo hotels that are partly owned by individuals, it's a different story. In Las Vegas, a 4,000-room W Hotel under construction will have a good portion of individually owned units and 300,000 square feet of meeting space.

Meeting planners should know that at condo hotels, the number of available rooms depends on how many owners decide to visit at a given time. In high season, it's likely that fewer rooms will be available to groups because more owners will be using them.

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