Conventions, sporting events boost demand for hotel rooms in Lansing

LANSING - When Shuto Con comes to town, its organizers book the entire Radisson Hotel for the thousands of cos-play enthusiasts, gamers, artists and anime dealers who come to Lansing for the annual event.

"And it fills up within minutes once we open up the link," said Stefanie Shall, Shuto Con's creator. "We have thousands of people who are hungrily waiting for that link to open and sell out the Radisson for rooms, basically instantly."

The convention, held at the Lansing Center and the Radisson, started in 2010 with 1,300 attendees. This year, it drew nearly 6,500.

"A little more than half come from out of state, from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky," Shall said. "We’ve had people come in from California and Florida before. They come in from all over for our convention."

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Once they sell out of rooms at the Radisson, they typically book anywhere between four and six overflow properties around the Lansing area, until they fill them up.

There was a time, just a few years ago, when the greater Lansing region was near the bottom in terms of hotel room occupancy compared to other major cities.

That's changed. 

"Now we are at the top, or very near the top," said Jack Schripsema, president and CEO of the Greater Lansing Convention and Visitors Bureau. 

"We not only passed it by a couple years ago, we exceed it, considerably. We’ve kind of flipped the script. We used to be at the bottom of a lot of those lists and now the Greater Lansing region is at the top of them."

Seven years ago, hotels in the region had a 54 percent occupancy rate. Last year, it was 64 percent.

"This region, first time ever, sold over one million room nights," Schripsema said. "That’s one room for one night that somebody paid for in this community. Over a million room nights were consumed last year."

The reasons? 

More conventions like Shuto Con (though typically not as extravagantly costumed as Shuto Con).

More annual events for organizations. Lansing has been getting back groups that haven’t been here for quite some time and getting onto the rotations of groups who've not been here before, Schripsema said. 

More sporting events, and not just Big Ten events. Youth sporting events have been up significantly over the past few years.

In 2016, the Greater Lansing Sports Authority hosted 104 events, with 68,714 participating athletes and just under 310,000 spectators, according to the GLCVB 2016 annual report.

When youth amateur sports competitions – lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, archery, volleyball, basketball, baseball, ice skating, gymnastics - are held in the area, that brings the athletes that participate as well as all their families.

The Michigan Youth Wrestling Association (MYWAY) championship finals was held in Lansing for the first time this year. 

"We actually worked with them to put it at the Lansing Center, which is more conducive for exhibits and big conventions," Schripsema said. "They took a couple of their exhibit halls and had something like 32 wrestling mats, brought bleachers in and we ended up with 19,000 people in our community for the weekend. And we were expecting 12,000."

The largest drawing event for 2017 so far, what Schripsema refers to as "kind of our Super Bowl of events," was Odyssey of the Minds World Finals.

The event, a creative problem-solving competition for students of all ages, is held every other year on the campus of Michigan State University. This year's games took place at the end of May.

"There aren’t a lot of schools around that can accommodate our numbers and the different performance sites we need," said Pamela Gombert, association director for Creativity Unlimited in Michigan, the organization that runs Odyssey of the Mind in Michigan. "MSU is one that can."

This is the fifth time MSU has hosted the Odyssey of the Mind world finals, which brought in 837 teams from around the world.

"Many of the people that come are staying on campus, but the ones who don’t, stay in hotels very close to campus," Gombert said.

Odyssey of the Mind promotes very strongly staying on campus so those attending will have the full experience, but those who venture away enjoy sights in East Lansing and in Lansing, she said.

"They find it very friendly and easy to get around in," Gombert said. "Some of them don’t have the luxury of a baseball team in their home town or going to see a state capitol right there or the downtown area. Of course, the MSU Dairy Store is always a big hit. And then walking the little strip in downtown East Lansing is fun.They like to do that."

The GLCVB is on target this year, through the first four months, through April, about a third of the year in, to exceed last year.

"Which is unbelievable historic rates," Schripsema said. "We’re up about two points, so over two points already for the first third of the year. All four months have been very strong months. We’re on the right path, there’s good things happening here, and it's not just one thing, it's a number of things."

Contact Vickki Dozier at (517) 267-1342 or vdozier@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickkiD.