Delta motel growth
People need a place to stay while the blues play
by C. Richard Cotton
DBJ Contributing Writer
A longtime draw to the Mississippi Delta, the twangy music born of toiling in cotton fields and surviving loss fills motel
rooms from Clarksdale to Greenwood as it has for decades. But there is a new urgency in finding room at the inn.
Bill Seratt wears two hats in the Delta hospitality industry; he’s executive director of the Greenville Convention & Visitors
Bureau and current president of the seven-member Mississippi Delta Tourism Association. He’s a busy man with a focus
on what brings people to his neck of the woods.
And Seratt recognizes that seemingly faraway events can and do have effects on local areas - the Delta is no different.
“After the horrific incidents of 9-11,” he waxed philosophically, “people are wanting to get back to their roots and learn
about their culture.” Seratt pointed to a recent survey showing that cultural and heritage tourism is the fastest growing
segment of the industry.
The Delta, he declared is, in a unique position to satiate that hunger. With its blues music and growing number of festivals
and the centuries-old heritage of life along the Mississippi River, Seratt believes a treasure trove of tourism opportunities
await the visitor.
Those same visitors, who Seratt says come mainly from within 500 miles of the region and have been increasing during
the past few years, are looking for fun, food, a positive cultural experience and a place to stay while they get those things.
Motels have always been part of the Delta landscape; hotels were early on part of the cities but are again becoming more
common. The difference is that a motel’s room doors usually open to the outside while a hotel’s room doors open to the inside
of the building. Seratt says most new lodging construction in the Delta - and, for that matter, across the nation - is of the
hotel variety because people today are more security-conscious than before 9-11.
The Delta’s hotel development baron is V.K. Chawla, owner of Greenwood-based Chawla Enterprises. Besides owning six
hotels in four cities, his firm is currently constructing three more establishments in Grenada, Greenville and Greenwood.
“We see a need for new first-class accommodations in these areas,” said Chawla, “ . . . we feel that tourism is ready
to boom in the Delta and Northwest Mississippi.”
The new facilities are “interior corridor” hotels, as Chawla calls them and range from 72-74 rooms.
Mike Cashion, executive director of the 2,100-member Mississippi Hospitality & Restaurant Association, said the Chawla
properties fit the building pattern of new hotels being constructed outside large metropolitan areas.
“They’re smaller than full-service hotels,” Cashion explained, contrasting them with large urban structures. He said the
Delta hotels generally offer limited or no food service, room service or meeting space. “Mississippi’s (hotel growth) is in
limited-service lodging.”
The more than 100 hotel rooms in Yazoo City are “sometimes not sufficient,” said Carolyn Coates, office manager of the
city’s Chamber of Commerce. The last hotel built there was several years ago, when a Best Western came to town.
Getting a room can be particularly challenging during summers when reunion season is in full swing and every four years
when Yazoo Day is held around the Fourth of July: “That fills up the motels,” Coates declared.
Up the road in Greenwood, Janice Moor said the 500 hotel rooms there will increase with the completion later this year
of one of the new Chawla properties, a Hampton Inn Hotel. Last year, the upscale Alluvian Hotel opened in downtown, forming
an instant landmark.
“We have a good occupancy in our hotels, and occasionally we do get a crunch,” said Moor, who recently retired as executive
director of the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce. Greenwood, she explained, is a staging spot for “a
lot of people who come into the Delta to sell” products and services for companies.
Draws include small conferences and larger conventions at the Leflore County Civic Center; soccer, baseball and softball
tournaments at Stribling Park Sports Complex; events at nearby Mississippi Valley State University; a June hot-air balloon
festival and October blues festival; and “also a lot of hunting and fishing.”
Cheryl Lyon counts on “spillover to other cities” to handle overflows of accommodation demand in Cleveland, where she
serves as tourism director for the Cleveland/Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce.
A new Holiday Inn Express — also a Chawla property — opened last year and increased the city’s hotel room count by 13.5
percent. The home of Delta State University, source of much demand for rooms, now boasts 425 hotel rooms and two bedand-
breakfast inns. (Many larger Delta towns boast B&B accommodations among their offerings.)
The spillover phenomenon is reciprocal: “We get spillover from the blues festival in Greenwood,” said Lyon.
“DSU brings in a lot of traffic.” That includes basketball, football and, due to its much-touted aquatic facility, swimming
competitions.
If there is one thing Bill Seratt is not singing, it’s the blues. The Mississippi Delta Tourism Association president said “overall, all seven markets have seen (tourism) growth.”
He said the 1,150 rooms in and around Greenville have experienced a sizable occupancy increase just since October, when
Washington County’s fiscal year 2004 began.
“The hospitality tax (revenue) is up 9 percent from 2003 and we’re still early in the year,” Seratt explained. “We projected
a 5 percent increase for the year and I think we’ll beat that because we’re just now coming into our best months.” DBJ
