By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
While 2024 was a good year for tourism in Buchanan County, there was still one major problem area, the number of available hotels in St. Joseph.
In fact, due to the low supply, hotel rates were almost $11 higher than in 2023. Which in turn made occupancy drop nearly a full percentage point from year to year, and the total rooms booked dropped over 3,000.
Convention and Visitors Bureau spokesman Christian Mengel says often businesses bring up the lack of hotels when bringing in businesspeople, who might end up having to stay in Kansas City
“If they stay down there, what are they going to do? They’re going to get Starbucks in the morning down there, they’re going to come in do their work here, they’re going to leave early because they’re like oh I’ve got a little bit of a drive back to my hotel, they drive down there, and they eat dinner down there,” Mengle says on the KFEQmunnity show. “And so now we are losing dollars to a community down south of us that didn’t earn it, that’s our businesses that earned that business being here.”
Mengel says more hotels could be added on top of some recently developed hotels but doesn’t feel like too many more are needed. Mengel says ultimately the goal with this is just to bring more people into St. Joseph
“So, there’s that balance of if you have a lower occupancy but a lot of hotels, you can still have a lot of people, but if you have really high occupancy and not a lot of hotels. that can still be the same number of people,” Mengle explains. “So, it’s that balance of what’s the absolute most people we can get into town? What’s that balance of hey we are an affordable price.”
Two hotels are being developed near Frederick Avenue, one at the site of the old Ramada Inn, with another on land next to Stoney Creek Inn. One hotel was recently completed in the North Village Shoppes, while another is being developed. Could there be room for more?
Mengle says one obvious answer is a hotel downtown
“So you’re not getting that foot traffic of actual people walking to the restaurant, walking to the bar, walking to take their kids to the candy store, walking to the Civic Arena to see a sporting event, walking to the Missouri Theatre to see a show, walking to the Trail Theatre to see a show,” Mengle says. “We have so many cool things that people can’t walk to, they’ve got to drive all the way across town, we’ve got to convince them to come all the way across town.”
Mengle says when people spend most of their trip driving, the last thing they want to do is spend more time in the car finding something to do, so a downtown hotel would help allow people to walk from place to place.
You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.
