First 100-plus-room hotel to open in more than year gets set for guests.

A new hotel, believed to be the first property with more than 100 rooms to begin operation in Los Angeles County in more than a year, has scheduled a grand opening ceremony for this Monday (April 18).

The property, called the Central Plaza Los Angeles Airport Hotel, had been vacant for slightly more than two years after its developer, a major Japanese company, went bankrupt shortly after the project was completed.

The Central Plaza, which its management boasts is a "boutique-style" property with individualized service, is on West Century Boulevard just east of Los Angeles International Airport. The so-called "airport strip" already has several major hotels with between 500 and 1,200 rooms each, and has by far the highest concentration of rooms of any submarket in Los Angeles County.

The new hotel has 178 rooms and suites and is adjacent to or near such major airport properties as the Sheraton, Hyatt and Renaissance.

"We're definitely the smallest hotel in the area but that's going to be our strength," said Scott Henricks, the hotel's sales manager who before being named to his current position was a stockbroker.

A local hotel industry analyst also said that if the Central Plaza is to succeed, it will have to set itself apart from the large properties in the area.

The analyst, who did not want to be named, said the airport hotels are highly competitive, which drives down prices.

"Because the room rates are low, a small hotel with lower costs probably has a good chance of succeeding," the analyst said.

However, on the other hand, the Central Plaza could have problems filling rooms because it is not affiliated with a major or well-known hotel company, said the analyst.

"It doesn't have a brand-name operator and as far as I know it's not connected to any of the big hotel reservations systems," said the analyst.

Henricks, the sales manager, said last week the hotel is now listed in the Sabre and Apollo computer reservations systems that are operated by American and United airlines, respectively.

The Central Plaza was built by Maruko, a real estate company based in Tokyo. The seven-story hotel was completed in August 1991 and has never been occupied. Shortly after the hotel was completed, Maruko went into bankruptcy.

A year ago the property was sold to the Central Group of Hotels, a Bangkok, Thailand-based hotel company. The Central Plaza is the group's first hotel property in the United States, said Henricks.

The hotel was sold through an auction that listed the property at $11.5 million. A spokeswoman for the auction house that conducted the sale said the hotel ended up being sold for between $9 million and $10 million.

It could not be immediately determined how much it cost to build the hotel. Because of the depressed and overbuilt market, however, Los Angeles County hotels have been selling for about 60 percent of their development costs.

According to the latest available information from PKF Consulting, a hospitality industry accounting and consulting firm, the average hotel room occupancy rate in the airport area in February was 66.3 percent. A year earlier, the average occupancy in the airport area was 62.6 percent.

The industry-accepted break-even point for most hotels is an occupancy rate of between 65 percent and 67 percent.

According to PKF, the average daily room rate in February at LAX-area hotels was $57.04 compared to $58.27 in February 1993. The average daily room rate in the county in February was $80.62 compared to $82.74 in February 1993.

Henricks, the hotel's sales manager, said Central Plaza's room rates range from $115 to $190 a night.