A competing alliance. (Hospitality).

Rival businesses don't often roost together but in light of recent economic times building one huge nest with the resources of a few top birds seems to make perfect business sense to four downtown Salt Lake City hotels.

The Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown, Marriott City Center, Salt Lake City Hilton and Wyndam hotels have joined in a cooperative marketing venture they call One Source. Through this agreement, the four hotels market their individual bank of guest rooms as one 1,100-room block, which in conjunction with 465,000 feet of convention space at the nearby Salt Palace Convention Center, creates a package saleable to large-scale convention business. "One Source allows us to do something we couldn't do on our own -- compete with other cities for large conventions," says Gregg Lofgran, Salt Lake City Hilton director of sales and marketing.

Conversations about a hotel marketing cooperative in Salt Lake City began when the sales and marketing directors at the current One Source hotels realized the commonalities each property shared. Each hotel is located within walking distance of the Salt Palace Convention Center; is part of a large, nationally-recognized chain with a national, or even worldwide, sales force; features new or recently renovated facilities; and offers a wide range of dining options. So, instead of continuing to compete for smaller pieces of the pie, the four hotels decided to join forces to have their cake and eat it too. "One Source is the next best thing to having 1,100 hotel rooms and a huge convention space all under one roof," says Bob O'Neill, director of sales and marketing for the Marriott Downtown.

The One Source cooperative works like this: When one of the participating hotels receives a request for proposal (RFP) for a convention requiring 400 to 1,000 guests rooms, the hotel immediately sends the RFP on to the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB). From there, Director of Convention Sales Beth Belt contacts and collects bids from the other One Source properties and presents a collective bid to the potential client, all within 24 hours. "In the current business environment, customers expect rapid response," says Susan Liston, director of sales and marketing at the Marriott City Center. "I think our ability to put together a well-planned and thought-out package and bid is what will make this program successful."

Belt remains the client's primary contact throughout the business transaction, from organizing and overseeing site inspections to troubleshooting while a convention is under way. Marketing and communications of One Source, however, is left to the hotels. "We respect that it's the CVB's job to sell all of Salt Lake City, not just these four downtown hotels," says Lofgran.

Since hotels are legally not allowed to divulge rates to one another, however, there is the possibility that during the bidding process, the hotel originally receiving the lead could be underbid by the three other One Source properties. But while the cooperative requires this small leap of faith, the chances for getting this business through One Source far outweigh the chances of being left out. "The partnership does require a slightly more altruistic view of conducting business," O'Neill says. "But it also exposes us to potential business we would not have been in the running for before."

It's not a stretch to see One Source as a way for these hotels to compete with Little America and Grand America, which combined offer well over 1,000 guest rooms and thousands of feet of meeting space. Lofgran, however, says the hotels making up One Source present a completely different product than that offered by the Little America and Grand America properties. "The Little and Grand America hotels offer two very different experiences for their clientele and are not located as close to the Convention Center as the One Source hotels," Lofgran points out.

But can One Source really compete with convention meccas like Orlando, San Diego and New York, where downtown-area hotels can offer the same number of guest rooms and ample meeting space all under one roof? "Even if we don't book a group because the meeting planner is looking for a more traditional hotel convention center experience, it puts Salt Lake City on the radar screen," says Belt. "Before One Source, Salt Lake City would often not even be considered for this scale of business."

Two years ago, three hotels in Indianapolis, Indiana -- the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown, Westin Indianapolis and the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis -- partnered with the Indiana Convention Center and RCA Dome to accomplish the same goal as that of One Source. According to Dennis Johnson, marketing director at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown, even though the Indianapolis hotel/convention center cooperative has yet to garner many bookings, the benefits of partnerships formed through the cooperative are substantial. "It made us raise the bar in servicing larger conventions," Johnson said. "And since the convention business relies so heavily on word-of-mouth exposure, how this program helped us to focus and present better conventions in itself was worth every dime we spent marketing ourselves as a group."

One of the most well-known and successful hotel/convention center partnerships is the Boston Convention Complex in Boston, Massachusetts. The cooperative, which offers 3,000 guest rooms and 360,000-square-feet of meeting space, includes the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, the Sheraton Boston Hotel, the Boston Marriott Copley Place and the Westin Copley Place Boston. This group of businesses has taken partnership beyond marketing to integrating hotel services. Collectively, they offer shared telephone service between hotels, mom charging privileges for restaurants between hotels and, for meeting planners, programmed cell phones for use between properties. The key to the Boston Convention Complex's success is how well the staff of each individual property has learned to work together. 'The level of service and cooperation planners find here keeps us at the leading edge," says Bob Pellegrini, area director of sales and marketing at the Westin Co pley Place Boston.

Salt Lake City's One Source program was introduced at the end of April. Since then, one or two groups have made bookings as a result of the program, but the volume of leads has increased twofold, which is where the One Source participants say becoming bedfellows will pay off in the long run. "Because of Salt Lake City's proximity to the airport, safe urban environment and easy access to recreation, meeting planners want to come here," Lofgran says. "With One Source, now they can."

Melissa O'Brien Fields is a Salt Lake City-based freelance writer.