Apr. 18, 2003 - President George W. Bush and Gov. Bob Holden were in town, but for a few hundred St. Louisans on Wednesday, the day's VIP was Bill Marriott. 

The chairman and chief executive of Marriott International Inc. was here for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at his company's newest St. Louis hotel, the Renaissance Grand downtown. On a brisk walking tour of the Grand and the nearby Renaissance Suites, he greeted at least half of the hotels' 530 employees and gave his local managers a taste of his hands-on style. 

In a bar near the Renaissance Grand's lobby, he told managers to remove a couple of tables to create a more intimate setting. In the area that once was the lobby of the old Statler Hotel, he was told that a French restaurant called Post & Sons will open over the summer. 

Marriott, whose father founded the company in 1927 as a root-beer stand, quickly gave his subordinates the benefit of his long experience in the hospitality industry. "It would make a nice lobby lounge," he said. "You'll lose your ass on a French restaurant." 

Dennis Wagner, the local Renaissance general manager, responded that market research had identified a need for a high-end French restaurant. 

Marriott shook his head and continued with the tour, getting briefed along the way about the hotel's top problem: a shortage of convention business in St. Louis. 

Later, he had some sharp words for the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. "It's a challenge how quickly the marketing staff of the convention center is going to put some rooms on the books," he told reporters. "They missed their goal by 50 percent. They've got to step up." 

Marriott was exaggerating, but he's right about the missed targets. In December 2000, when the financing for the Renaissance project was completed, the Convention and Visitors Commission estimated that it would book 697,850 room-nights worth of conventions in 2003 and 800,000 in 2004. 

Those estimates have slipped to 517,912 room-nights for this year and 553,700 for next year. 

Carole Moody, the commission's executive director, said St. Louis lost convention business during the years when local officials were debating where to put a convention hotel and how to finance it. Many national groups dropped St. Louis from consideration the last time they wanted a Midwestern destination, and they might not return to the heartland until late this decade. 

Moody, who took over the commission's top job last year, said she's ready to accept Marriott's challenge. Last year, she said, the commission added $1.4 million to its advertising budget. She also has reorganized the sales team and has begun a quality-control effort to ensure repeat business. 

Meanwhile, war and terrorism and disease have thrown the hotel industry into what Marriott called "the worst market in 70 years." So, a new project like the Renaissance Grand "is going to take awhile" to reach profitability. 

But that doesn't faze this veteran hotelier. He compares the St. Louis property to the Marriott New York Marquis, which opened in 1985 in the heart of Times Square. "A lot of people in our company, including my father, thought we were crazy," he said. "It took us seven or eight years before it reached a reasonable occupancy level. But now, it's pound for pound one of the most valuable hotels in the world." 

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(c) 2003, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. MAR,