Raleigh wants more hotel rooms downtown

The lack of available rooms – there are a total of 1,011 – has led city officials to advocate for increased building activity in the area that would help appeal to a larger-scale convention and trade show market.

City officials insist that the current number of hotel rooms available in downtown Raleigh do not allow the Raleigh Convention Center to compete with comparable convention centers across the nation.

Raleigh's Convention Center is located across from the downtown Marriott.

The current 1,011 rooms are spread out among hotels in the downtown overlay district, which include the Raleigh Marriott City Center, the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, the Holiday Inn-Raleigh Downtown, the Hampton Inn & Suites and the Days Inn.

The number of hotel rooms, or lack thereof, limits parties interested in the convention center and as a result limits business transient profit, said Loren Gold, an executive vice president of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A feasibility study conducted in 2003 for the Raleigh Convention Center – which was built 5 years later – showed that cities of equal population and with similarly sized convention centers had average hotel room numbers between 1,500 and 2,000.