Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson’s recent talk about a “huge increase in tourism and convention business” banks in part on the completion of the yet-to-open National Harbor, according to one county official.
“That’s the huge convention growth that’s on the horizon,” J. Matthew Neitzey, executive director of the county’s Conference and Visitors Bureau, told The Examiner Thursday.
National Harbor is a multiuse development rising along the banks of the Potomac River just south and east of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Upon completion in 2008, it will have residential units, more than a million square feet of retail space, and a 1,500-room resort and convention center.
Neitzey said Gaylord National, operator of the center, already reports large blocks of rooms booked for the period after National Harbor’s opening. That development will blow previous convention statistics for the county out of the water, Neitzey said.
In 2004, the most recent year for available statistics, visitors to the county spent more than $903 million. That amount accounted for just more than 9 percent of all tourism business in Maryland.
Neitzey said some of the county’s biggest tourist draws remain the Six Flags theme park in Largo and the University of Maryland campus in College Park. Crowds and cash also flow into the county for events such as Washington Redskins games at FedEx Field in Largo and smaller, more specialized competitions at Show Place Arena, the county’s equestrian center in Upper Marlboro. Such events “do OK for spectators,” Neitzey said. “But it’s a huge impact for our hotels because virtually for every horse that’s in that horse show, there’s three or four people and they’re all using hotels.”
