LULAC Convention Pulls Plug On El Paso; Local Hotels To Blame

According to city officials, the Sun City could be missing out on an estimated $900,000 in revenue thanks to a national convention deciding to relocate to another city in 2013.

General manager of the El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau, Bill Blaziek, told ABC-7 that the reason the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, voted to relocate their national convention was due to the lack in number and quality of hotel rooms in downtown El Paso.

LULAC convention committee co-chair Belen Robles spoke of one hotel in particular.

“The Camino Real is the only hotel that could accommodate the numbers for the convention, but it’s not currently up to par. For LULAC to return to El Paso, improvements would have to be made to the Camino Real or the new hotels would need to be built downtown,” said Robles.

ABC-7 checked out the Camino Real’s reviews on multiple travel websites, with the hotel scoring mostly between 3.5 and 4 stars.

Many of the reviews boasted clean rooms and professional service. More than a few reviews complained of air-conditioning problems and dated furniture, among other issues.

ABC-7 tried to contact hotel management about LULAC’s concerns, but they did not return our calls in a timely manner.

El Paso Inc. spoke with Camino Real’s general manager Rene Rubio back in September about concerns about the hotel’s condition.

“I know we need some things, but not to remodel the hotel. It’s fine,” said Rubio.

Other concerns besides quality included the number of total rooms available downtown. Blaziek said the downtown area currently only has about 450 quality rooms, about half those needed to accommodate the convention.

“Normally they are able to contain all their delegates in one hotel, perhaps one or two hotels. Here we had to disperse them into six hotels,” said Blaziek.

LULAC officials also noted the lack of a central hotel location caused concern.

City Manager Joyce Wilson reacted to the news by saying she plans to launch an aggressive campaign to attract a large full-service hotel to the downtown area.

Blaziek said he hopes this setback will spur the city to make positive changes that will lead to more opportunities.

“If we can bring quality hotels to downtown, coupled with all that we’ve done already, the Plaza Theater, the museum, the beautiful El Paso Convention Center, we can attract state and regional conventions on a regular basis, but we have to have quality lodging,” said Blaziek.

Robles said if improvements would be made to the Camino Real or new hotels were added to the area, that the convention could return by as early as 2015.