Thursday, September 16, 1999
Hotel occupancy nearly tripled in summer
New aquarium boosted visits
BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — Visitors flooding into Northern Kentucky to visit the Newport Aquarium helped area hotels nearly triple the number of rooms they sold this summer.
“The aquarium has been the best rooms generator we have seen since The Beast (roller coaster) was introduced at Kings Island many years ago,” said Jim Willman, vice president at the Drawbridge Estate hotel in Fort Mitchell.
The Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau reported Wednesday that the number of hotel rooms sold through August of this year increased to 88,481, compared with 33,991 through the first eight months of 1998.
The majority of the rooms sold were purchased by tourists visiting the aquarium, said Tom Caradonio, president of the convention and visitors bureau.
“The Newport Aquarium is taking its place as the hottest attraction in our area,” Mr. Caradonio said.
The traffic on the bureau's Web site — www.nkycvb.com — reached 2.6 million hits through July, a tenfold increase over last year.
The aquarium has totaled 700,000 visitors this summer, Mr. Caradonio said.
Until this summer, hotel business had been down in Northern Kentucky. Occupancy rates dropped 5 percent in 1998.
The aquarium is “having a positive impact on our business,” said Ted Kalahar, general manager at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott in Florence.
“Sometimes it is a combination of things such as people coming to several attrac tions, but we've had a lot of people staying with us who said they were going to see the aquarium,” Mr. Kalahar said.
The undersea life at the riverfront aquarium even beat the Cincinnati Reds at the Drawbridge.
“We sold over 600 rooms in aquarium packages in July and August, which surpassed the number of Reds packages we sold those months,” Mr. Willman said.
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