If you want to be a big cheese in the game Monopoly, buy hotels. But the game’s rules limit one to buying a single hotel per property or street — and only after you’ve bought at least four houses.
At the outset, the rules of Monopoly prioritize the value of homes (community) over hotels (imported, temporary community). The rules also limit hotels to one per street. And even with these rules, people playing the game can get rich, live long and prosper.
Maybe the city of Charleston needs to take a cue from Monopoly: It’s time to stop allowing so many hotels. We don’t need any more hotel rooms. We have enough. In fact, we’ve got so many that even visitors spending money in restaurants and shops are feeling crowded. The streets are so clogged that it takes an ungodly amount of time to traverse the peninsula.
The number of hotels and other accommodations on the peninsula has skyrocketed. In the 20 years starting in 2002, the number of hotel rooms rose almost 40% to 4,656 rooms. Add the city’s peninsular allocation of 490 short-term rentals and there are well over 5,100 rooms for rent these days on the peninsula.
Maybe we’d need more if those we already have were full. But they’re not. Across the Charleston area, hotel occupancy ranged from 45% in January 2022 to a high of about 80% three months later. It hovered above 70% from March through October.
“Occupancy decreased to 54.18% after peaking during the summer months of 2022,” according to a January 2023 analysis by Colliers South Carolina.
Turn around the way you look at the occupancy rate: It also means at least 30% of rooms are empty for half the year. So explain again why we need more hotels?
Here’s what Colliers says: “Luxury travel continues to be strong. New construction and hotel development in Charleston are signs of a healthy growing market. Charleston hotels remain a popular investment asset class in the current inflationary environment.”
Translated, that means analysts believe more people will visit and that developing more properties is a good investment. Property owners don’t want to miss out on a big payday — even though they’ve had years to do so. And developers want to do what they do — make things that are bigger, grander and more expensive than now so they can make money, too.
Unfortunately, all of this development avarice is changing the character of Charleston. About the only time it feels like the old Charleston — a pleasant city to walk uncrowded streets and enjoy beautiful homes, gardens and shops — is very early in the morning when most people are wiping the crust from their eyes.
We implore city leaders to clamp down on more hotels and to get rampant commercial development under control. To do otherwise will cause Charleston to topple from the top of those tourist lists that city boosters prize. And then, there will be a lot more empty hotel rooms.
Let’s follow the economic law of scarcity — that if there’s a limited supply, the perception of value increases — not of the tenets of oversupply and greed.
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