Aug. 30--RIVERSIDE, Calif.--Turnabout is fair play in the hotel industry. 

Three years ago, the Holiday Inn Select in Riverside pulled a coup by winning a three-year contract to provide discounted hotel rooms to United Parcel Service for crew members flying through the company's West Coast Air Hub at Ontario International Airport. Before that, crew members had been staying at the 309-room Hilton Ontario Airport. 

Now that the contract is almost up, the Ontario hotels are trying to win back UPS. The cargo carrier is shopping a contract valued at about $950,000. The winning hotel would provide nearly 19,000 room- nights, as they are known in the industry, over two years, according to Mary Tucker, tourism manager for the Ontario Convention and Visitors Bureau. 

UPS is looking for a hotel that can offer rooms at about $50 each and is close to restaurants and things to do, said Dean C. Clark, grievance committee member of the Independent Pilots Association, which represents UPS pilots. 

Proximity to the airport is not an issue, however. The 20- to 25-minute drive to the Holiday Inn Select in Riverside was never an issue, said UPS Chief Pilot Ron Woodard. 

In fact, proximity can be a detriment, Clark said, because most crew members fly in during the morning and sleep during the day. 

If the hotel is too close to the airport and it's too noisy, the pilots may want to find a different place to stay, he said. 

Woodard said UPS has been extremely happy with the Riverside hotel, saying that it performed as well as any of the 70 hotels worldwide where UPS crews stay. The company is simply looking to cut costs by shopping the contract around, he said. 

Holiday Inn staff declined comment. 

The 339-room Doubletree Hotel in Ontario is among the front-runners for winning the contract, according to members of Ontario's hospitality industry. The Hilton Ontario Airport and the Sheraton Ontario Airport Hotel are also vying for the contract, Tucker said. 

In addition, the Ontario Airport Marriott is adding 142 rooms and could use a base of business, said hotel manager Steve Goldman. 

Airline crew business isn't always sought after because it can displace higher-profit business with lower-profit traffic, said Goldman. For that reason, some hotels, like the Mission Inn, are moving away from airline crew business. 

"When we began operating in 1993, we encouraged (airline crew business) to bring revenue to the hotel and fill an occupancy vacuum," said Ted Weggeland, a member of the board of directors of the Historic Mission Inn Corp., which owns and operates the hotel. 

But in 1997, it cut short a three- year contract with Southwest Airlines because it was a financial drain. Southwest Airlines now uses the Hilton Ontario Airport. 

-----To see more of The Press-Enterprise, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.inlandempireonline.com 

(c) 2001, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. BAS, UPS, HLT, PRH, HOT, MAR, LUV,