Recommendation- The Carrboro Grande Bretagne Hotel

As we traveled through Athens one of the first things that we noticed was the presence of hotels. Not one hotel, not two hotels and not three hotels, but literally hundreds of hotels. Everywhere we looked we saw hotels(and we even stayed in one). It was one of those epiphimical moments when we realized(and almost simultaneously) that if we want people to come to Carrboro to visit then we need to have a least one hotel. Sure we can have our tourists come in for a day, spend all their money and then leave before bedtime, but that will severely cut down on the amount of money we can get them to spend.

It was said about Florida "The state of Florida would feel like it failed if a tourist leaves Florida or an old person dies and they still have a dollar in their hand". Although a bit ruthless and a mind set more Republican than I would like to think our town is, we would nonetheless recommend that the Town of Carrborro look into this as a Town Policy. They'll want to disguise the whole "Get as much money out of each tourist" part so we'll focus more on adding a hotel to the growing list of Carrboro's services.

Think about it- if a family of six comes into town for the day they'll spend about $30. They'll walk through Carr Mill Mall, buy a pretzel or a bead, go to Wendy's or Kentucky Fried Chicken, feed the family of 6 for about $20 and if we're lucky their gas tank will be empty so they'll have to fill up at one of our local gas stations.(By the way, our gas stations out number our hotels 6:0- which is our way of saying "Hey partner- make sure you're out by bed time- we don't take too kindly to strangers in our neck of the woods at night!". Of course it's important to protect our little children and our possessions from those outside who want to take them from us, plus we want our criminals to be homegrown so that they keep the money in the community(maybe it's time we reexamined the idea of having a pawn shop in Carrboro).

We saw many hotels, but none that we thought would catapult Carrboro from an asterisk attached to descriptions of Chapel Hill to a full fledged town that could stand on it's own two exits than Athens' Grande Bretagne Hotel. It's rich history. Serving as the Nazi headquarters during the German occupation of Greece, overlooking the Parliament building and Syntagma Square and employing a doorman, she sits atop the throne as Athens Grande Ol' Hotel. At a minimum of $450 a night per couple that family of six would now have to spend $1350 just for their hotel. Compare that to the $30 they spent before and you'll realize that they are spending 45 times more and that's just for one night in the hotel.). Add to that dinner and lunch in the hotel and we can tack on another $300.

With 363 rooms and 23 suites we're looking at a revenue of close to $200,000 a day just for the room. If you visit the hotel you'll see that it has 24 hour room service(this will keep down our traffic problem if we can keep the tourists from leaving their rooms!), Newspaper delivery daily and Bookstore & Newsstand(Sorry to the guy who runs the little metal Newspaper boxes, but - business is business!), beauty parlor and barber shop(so sorry to the Bee Hive and Friendly), Travel Desk(I think our last travel agency folded a few years back when we realized that we were trying to get people into our Town to spend money, not send our people out to spend their money elsewhere), The Winter Garden(open in summer too), but a great place for people to spend money on food.

If you add on the services that the hotel offers we're looking at a revenue stream of close to $300,000 a day. Sure a few of our business will falter under the weight of such a large hotel, but taxes will also drop(I'm sure a few stores wouldn't mind sacrificing their income for the good of the town as a whole-isn't that what patriotism is all about? Carborro-ites- we're all in this thing together so a few of you may lose out but hopefully we'll have some added social services to help you out!). I tried to get a total but my calculator would only show "error". If it's more money than my calculator(think razor quick commuter)can handle imagine how much it will buy for a town of only 17,000!

It will only be a short time before Chapel Hill's "Franklin Street Hotel" opens(talk about lack of creativity for a name) and with their present monopoly on hotels unless we get started quickly we'll have a very difficult time breaking into the hotel business. On the other hand, if we can get this hotel up quickly and name it something that exudes an image of grace, luxury and history(The Grand Carr Mill Mall Hotel) we have a good chance of hijacking all the customers(clients or visitors in the world of Tourism) from Chapel Hill.