City says: We’ll find a new hotel

If the owners of the Camino Real Hotel refuse to bring it up to
El Paso standards for a Downtown convention hotel or sell it to
someone who will, then the city must do whatever it takes to
attract a new one.

That’s the response of city manager Joyce Wilson to comments by
a top executive with the Mexican company that owns the Camino, as
reported last week in El Paso Inc.

Wilson said she was “disappointed” by the tough stance of
Rosalinda Gonzalez, the general manager of Camino Real Hotels,
owned by the Mexico City-based Grupo Empresarial Angeles, when
asked about the company’s intentions.

Gonzalez indicated that they’ve gotten an offer from El Paso to
buy the Camino, which was rejected. She also said the hotel chain
will not participate in the city’s Downtown revitalization
efforts.

“We’re not going to sell. That’s decided,” Gonzalez told El Paso
Inc. “We’re not going to be part of this program.

“Our hotel is going to continue to be maintained as a historic
building according to our rules, which are Mexican rules for a
Mexican company,” she said.

The force of those comments was surprising, Wilson said.

“I find it unlikely that any business entity, regardless of
location, would not want to share in the benefit of a wholesale
revitalization effort which only improves their economic viability
and opportunities for the future,” Wilson said.

Mayor John Cook told El Paso Inc. he would be happy if Grupo
Empresarial Angeles would run the Camino Real by its own rules, but
it hasn’t.

“If they would operate the hotel like they operate the Camino
Real chain in Mexico, that would be fine,” Cook said. “In Mexico,
they take really good care of their hotels.

“The one in El Paso is very much neglected, even though we have
offered them incentives to make improvements.”

El Paso’s Camino Real is one of 28 hotels in the high-end Camino
group, but the others are in Mexico’s large cities and resorts.

LULAC canceled

The shabby conditions in El Paso’s largest hotel have been a
simmering issue for several years.

But they had never actually cost the city a major event, until
the recent cancellation of LULAC’s 2013 national convention.

The executive committee of the League of United Latin American
Citizens decided last December to move the 1,500-delegate
convention from El Paso to Las Vegas because of concerns raised by
LULAC officials in El Paso about the hotel.

The city, Wilson said, must have a first-class convention hotel
Downtown to enable it to compete for large events and advance
Downtown revitalization efforts.

“I am committed to finding a way to secure that asset for our
city and Downtown and am disappointed that this ownership group
doesn’t share in that vision apparently or want to be a partner to
leverage the Camino Real to be that hotel,” Wilson wrote in an
e-mail to El Paso Inc.

Asked to clarify her commitment, Wilson said she was referring
to the city’s need for a full-service convention hotel Downtown
“whether or not it is the Camino Real.”

The city has been trying to lure a new hotel to El Paso and is
willing, Wilson said, to become a partner “to build and operate one
and provide enough subsidies to make it happen.”

“Then, the Camino becomes less relevant and, in fact, loses
status because it now has another hotel with the same capacity to
really go head to head,” Wilson said. “I am committed to working
with any interested stakeholder to try to make that happen.

“This is what other cities do and so it is not so
far-fetched.”

Cook agrees and added, “I think the council is ripe to do
something like that.”

For years, he said, he has wanted the city to be part of a
public-private plan to build a major hotel and multi-purpose center
or arena south of City Hall in the area bounded by San Antonio to
Paisano and Santa Fe to Durango.

Trying again

Meanwhile, a small delegation of El Paso LULAC leaders traveled
to Washington, D.C., this weekend for a meeting of LULAC’s national
board, hoping to persuade the board to reverse the December
decision.

But the delegation could not get the issue put on the board’s
agenda for official consideration, and LULAC’s local leadership is
sharply divided over whether El Paso should be the site of the 2013
convention.

Originally, officials from the city’s Convention and Visitor’s
Bureau were to join the delegation in presenting the city’s case
for the convention.

But Bill Blaziek, CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau,
said those plans changed when the CVB learned the board would not
hear the city’s appeal.

“We have to respect their wishes,” Blaziek said. “For the city
of El Paso and the CVB, we have to maintain order and respect for
the national office.

“If we do, we are an obvious candidate for future
activities.”

In competing for conventions and large entertainment events, the
CVB no longer recommends that they use the 100-year-hotel Camino
Real Hotel.

Blaziek has said that’s because of on-going complaints and
problems, including the failure of the hotel’s air-conditioning
system last summer, which forced guests attending the Plaza Theatre
Film Festival to find other accommodations.

The Camino’s general manager, René Rubio, has said the 357-room
hotel is in good shape and that the owners have promised to spend
more than $800,000 to upgrade televisions in the rooms and
modernize bathrooms.

Gonzalez confirmed that plan and said it now calls for spending
more than $1 million. But she could not say when those improvements
will actually be made.

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