Allen County hotels see record numbers

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez | The Journal Gazette

Allen County hotels hosted a record number of people in May, members of the Allen County-Fort Wayne Capital Improvement Board learned this morning.

Occupancy was up 8 percent, according to a survey that includes between 3,500 and 3,600 of the county's approximately 5,000 hostelries, Bart Shaw, executive director of the Grand Wayne Center told the group.

Shaw said the survey generally did not include the county's smaller lodging establishments and those that are primarily residential.

But he and Marcy McKinley, the Grand Wayne's sales and marketing director, said the numbers were good news because early summer has typically been a tougher sell for the convention center.

Instead, both June and early July have been solidly booked this year, they said.

Visitors included a cubing-game national championship, a convention of the Missionary Church, and an Indiana school bus drivers statewide convention.