By Ken Alltucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The face of downtown's hospitality industry in the next three years will be more ball caps and Bermuda shorts than Armani suits and corporate expense accounts.

Facing sparse convention and trade show bookings through 2006, downtown Cincinnati's convention bureau is increasingly relying on tourists to fill restaurants and hotel rooms.

The strategy has paid off so far this year. Through September, the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau reported an increase of more than 100,000 tourist hotel bookings from a year ago. That helped bump up the region's hotel occupancy rates even as the hospitality industry nationwide - and especially the Midwest - has grappled with pitiful results this year.

The glimmer of success has prompted the Cincinnati bureau to further study the possibilities of tourism. Along with convention bureaus in Northern Kentucky and Warren County, the downtown bureau has hired Chicago-based C.H. Johnson Consulting Inc. to study tourism strategies. The Chicago consultant will unveil its study Tuesday to the Cincinnati bureau's board of directors. Possible outcomes: more regional cooperation or even a new entity dedicated exclusively to promoting regional tourism.

"We need to unify the tourism effort in Greater Cincinnati," said Wayne Bodington, general manager of the Westin Hotel downtown.

Lisa Haller, CEO of the downtown bureau, acknowledges that the tourism push is out of necessity.

Cincinnati's convention business is feeling the impact of the soft economy. Through September, the bureau counted 134 conventions and trade shows in Cincinnati that generated a total of 113,209 hotel room bookings. There were 18 fewer meetings through the same period a year ago, but those meetings attracted more delegates, resulting in 32,000 more hotel room bookings.

"What we're seeing throughout the industry is lower attendance at these meetings," Haller said.

The bureau forecasts a difficult stretch through 2006. Construction crews will start expanding the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center in 2004 - eliminating valuable meeting space until the expansion is completed two years later. The bureau estimates that it has had to turn away conventions that promised to book 55,000 rooms. That's an indication that groups want to meet in Cincinnati, Haller said, but hotels and restaurants will have to wait for the expanded center to host larger groups.

Courting tourists isn't always a palatable option for downtown's upscale hotels and restaurants. Leisure travelers tend to spend less money than their corporate counterparts. They often book rooms far in advance and pursue bargain Internet rates.

The Cincinnati bureau's research shows that the average tourist spends $197 a day during winter visits and $169 a day in the summer. That's far less than the $860-a-day tab of a typical conventioneer, according to the International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.

What's more, many question whether Cincinnati can repeat its 2003 tourist record. Through September, tourists booked 360,227 hotel rooms compared with 256,432 the year before.

But this year had a special infusion of visitors eager to visit the new Great American Ball Park or the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art.

Next year, it will be difficult to match 2003's tourism results, Bodington said.

"You only need to look at the experience of Pittsburgh and Milwaukee," Bodington said. "Both those teams had big attendance during the first year of the ball park, but the second year was not nearly so good."

E-mail kalltucker@enquirer.com