Denver

Tourism

After an economic slowdown in the late 1980s, Denver had its highest hotel occupancy rate in eight years in 1997. The city has 5,200 hotel rooms within walking distance of the $125 million Colorado Convention Center. Opened in June 1990, the convention center has 9,300 square meters (100,000 square feet) of meeting space and a 3,255 square-meter (35,000 square-foot) ballroom. Altogether, Denver has 29,000 hotel rooms.

In late 1999 Denver voters approved a construction project that will double the size of the Colorado Convention Center by 2003, adding new exhibit and meeting space, a new ballroom, a new 5,000-seat auditorium, and a parking garage. The expansion will make the convention center the sixth largest west of the Mississippi and the fifteenth largest in the country.

Plans were also announced for major hotel expansion, with a 1,100-room Marriott hotel to be built across the street from the convention center and a new 659-room Hilton hotel to go up at the site of the Denver Executive Tower Hotel.