New guide seen as way to attract Arlington Hts. hotel guests downtown
Arlington Heights officials will try to lure hotel guests on the southern end of town away from dining and entertainment options in Schaumburg and other suburbs, to Arlington Heights' downtown instead.
Their plan: a visitors guide that would be placed in hotel rooms promoting places to eat and play throughout Arlington Heights.
The guide would mostly feature venues downtown, which is some three miles from a cluster of hotels around the intersection of Algonquin and Arlington Heights roads.
Those hotel managers told village leaders last summer that visitors staying in their 983 rooms often find it more convenient to go to Woodfield Mall or nearby suburbs to dine and shop, than make the drive north on Arlington Heights Road to downtown Arlington Heights.
The village's proposed 2017 budget includes up to $20,000 to produce the visitors guide that would be placed in all hotel rooms in town. Up until three years ago, the village produced a "fairly thick" guide that was placed in hotels, said Charles Witherington-Perkins, the village's director of planning and community development.
The new guide would likely be smaller and utilize less text, meant as a "quick reference guide for customers sitting in their rooms and thinking what they are going to do that night," he said.
Hotel operators told village officials in June there are several issues keeping them from being more successful and leading their guests to leave the village. They cited five major ways the village could improve their guests' experience: corridor beautification, pedestrian mobility, signage, economic development and appeal to younger visitors.
Trustee Carol Blackwood, who sat in on the meeting with the hotel managers, said they also thought it "important to have something tangible" to give their guests.
Village Manager Randy Recklaus said many hotel guests don't know about downtown Arlington Heights, but they are aware of other towns' offerings, because they have publications in hotel rooms.
"Our downtown is superior to anything in the area. They had no way of knowing that," Recklaus said. "(250,000) visitors a year in our town and they're going somewhere else because there's a book sitting on their coffee table? (We're) having something to put under their nose and say this is where you are."