When You Can’t Go Home Again : Lodging Industry Finds a Market for Family Reunions

A new market is emerging in the lodging industry as many traditional family reunions move from the back yard barbecue or grandma’s porch to the nearest hotel.

Homes and families are smaller, and no one has room to put up the relatives. Both husbands and wives work outside the home, so there’s no time to plan for, much less cook for, a family reunion.

Steven E. Trombetti, spokesman for the American Hotel & Motel Assn. in Washington, saw the trend emerging.

“As we came out of the recession in 1980-81, travel dropped off considerably and hotels targeted theme marketing plans,” he said, “and we saw more and more people were working and thus created a further need for hotels to react to create a family reunion that traditionally had been done in one’s back yard.”

The Radisson Hotel in Wilmington, Del., is advertising a reunion package for weekends in July and August.

“We’ve always done family reunions, but we never really actively solicited that market. After we saw the business we’ve had with family reunions over the last two years, we wanted to tap into the market,” said Krista D. Ellis, sales director.

It’s the only hotel in the 160-hotel Radisson chain known to actively seek reunion business, said Thomas J. Polski, spokesman for Carlson Hospitality Group in Minneapolis, parent company of Radisson.

“It sounds like a very clever idea to me,” Polski said.

The McCormick Center Hotel in Chicago was “on the cutting edge” of the family reunion business, having actively advertised for such groups for two years, according to general manager Joseph Duellman.

“About three years ago we began to identify (family reunions) as a specific market. . . . We focused on it two years ago. Before that, the demand was coming pretty much by word of mouth,” Duellman said.

Tight Market Exists

Duellman and Trombetti both predicted other hotels will join the reunion business.

“I think hotel marketing is much more organized and sophisticated than it was some time ago,” Duellman said.

“And with all the new hotels in the marketplace, any segment of the market will make a difference in profit and loss. There will be fewer and fewer smaller segments that will be overlooked,” he said.

Beverly C. Robertson, spokeswoman for Holiday Inns Inc. in Memphis, Tenn., said over-building has created a tight market for the lodging industry.

Holiday Inns do play host to family reunions, although the chain does not solicit that business. But Robertson said she expects that the company’s 1,400 domestic properties will eventually begin advertising.

Ellis said that if the Radisson’s effort is successful, it might expand its reunion package beyond group rates for rooms and meals and offer extras.

“We can specialize it more and more to the client’s needs,” she said.

Trombetti’s association, a national trade group representing the lodging industry, already offers a brochure with tips for travelers, and he said he plans to produce a similar brochure dealing only with planning family reunions.

The brochure would be for “the average layman who would never consider using the hotel for this subject or might be hesitant to ask.”

Trombetti said he doesn’t know how much of the lodging industry’s $48 billion-a-year business is attributed to family reunions.

“But it’s safe to say it’s becoming an increasingly important market for hotels,” he said.