If Disney Hotels are slow with all the discounts just think about the surrounding hotels in the area. Here is a good article by the Orlando Sentinel.
Small hotels, motels losing sleep over empty beds
By SARA K. CLARKE
Sentinel Staff Writer
December 1, 2008
The hotels and motels on Walt Disney World's doorstep are worse off now than during the 2001 recession and the travel slump that followed the Sept.11 terrorist attacks.
Only three of every 10 hotel rooms in the west Kissimmee area were occupied on an average night in September. Signs along U.S. Highway192 near Disney's southern entrance advertise rooms for less than $30 a night. Traffic along the six-lane commercial strip is light; parking lots are empty or nearly so.
As these Osceola County hotel owners struggle against the sour economy to attract a shrinking number of tourists, they are competing more fiercely than ever with the giant theme-park resort that was once their lifeblood. During the past decade, Disney has made a big push into what it calls the "value" hotel market — an area it once left to the budget, economy and midprice properties beyond its borders.
Moderately priced hotels such as Disney World's All-Star Resorts and its newer Pop Century Resort now comprise more than 8,500 rooms — nearly as many as all the hotels in the west Kissimmee market combined. Bob Iger, chief executive of the resort's corporate parent, Walt Disney Co., recently told investors the company is "better prepared" to battle economic turmoil this time around, in part because of Disney World's arsenal of low-cost rooms.
"In prior recessions, we didn't have nearly as many value-priced rooms," Iger said. Disney World hotels are known for their consistently high occupancy rates. For the fiscal year ending in September, Disney reported its hotels and time shares were 90percent full. But Disney officials noted early last month that resort bookings for both Disney World and California's Disneyland had "slowed meaningfully" since mid-September.
And if there's more room at the inn these days for Disney World, that doesn't bode well for the resort's neighbors.
"If they're not full, there's no push-out," said John Brost, general manager of the Best Western Lakeside, just a couple of miles west of Disney World on U.S.192. "People are staying on Disney property at very reasonable rates."
As a result, the average west Kissimmee hotel was just 31percent full in September — less than the 38percent recorded in September 2001. In October, the area's average occupancy rate was 43percent — essentially even with October 2001 but down almost 19percent from a year ago, according to Smith Travel Research, which surveys the region's hotel market monthly.
Staying afloat
Issa Kassam once owned three hotels along U.S.192. Now he's thankful he owns only one.
Between plummeting occupancy and falling prices, he estimates that in October, his Knights Inn Maingate did little more than half the business it did a year ago. And Kassam has cut his $40 room rate to $30 a night.
"Business is awful," Kassam said. "I'm just trying to give it away, to keep my people employed."
Some hoteliers say falling gas prices have at least encouraged Florida residents to take weekend trips to Orlando's theme parks. At the Days Inn Maingate East, about a mile east of Disney, most of the guests these days have driven fewer than 200miles from home.
But while the hotel is holding its own, it is "definitely not looking at a profit," said Tim Webb, vice president of sales and marketing for the company that operates the hotel.
Rates at Disney's least-expensive hotels, meanwhile, have dipped recently as low as $49 a room on selected nights for season-pass holders and Florida residents, said Jacquee Polak, a Disney World spokeswoman.
The resort also has revived a discount package most recently offered in 2003 that allows guests to stay for seven nights while paying for only four. The "4-plus-3" deal means a family of four can stay for a week at one of Disney's "value" resorts — with four weeklong theme-park passes included — for as little as $1,271, or about $180 a night.
Hotel empire
In the past, Disney was generally content to leave the budget, economy and midprice markets to independents. Eventually, though, Disney built a hotel empire that now comprises more than 25,000 rooms — including a "value" segment that debuted in the late 1990s with the 5,760-room All-Star Resorts, where rooms went initially for $74 to $104 a night.
Hoteliers along U.S.192 in Osceola County then braced for Disney's equally large Pop Century Resort — but the company delayed opening until 2003, because of the 2001 recession and 9-11 attacks.
"The economy was already in a downturn [in 2001], and Sept.11 just put a dagger in our body," said Janak Desai, a hotelier who at the time owned the 64-room Baymont Inn on U.S.192.
When Pop Century Resort finally opened, only the first phase of 2,880 rooms took in guests. The second 2,880 rooms never opened, and the partially built complex stands lifeless across a lagoon from the finished resort, a testament to the lack of demand even on Disney property.
Mom-and-pops suffer
Duane Winjum, who manages the 224-room Royale Parc Suites on U.S.192 just east of Disney's World Drive, describes the area's hotel market as a series of concentric rings drawn around Disney World.
"The closer you are to Disney, probably the better you're doing," Winjum said.
If that's true, it might explain why Rene Sandoval is so desperate.
When he bought the Sevilla Inn on U.S.192 a few years ago, the 50-room motel was charging $35 to $39 a night. Now most of Sandoval's clients are locals who essentially live at the hotel. "Even $25 they don't want to pay," he said.
We got in for $87/point and wish we would've gotten in sooner.
