UPDATED: Hotels discounting for meetings, and a report on why they're discounting

This is an UPDATED version of the AP article we posted yesterday:

Hotel chains (and lots of independent lodgings as well) are working to attract meetings, conferences and other group events with a variety of special packages and rates. Please, please, book your event here, and you willl be amazed what we can do for you on the overall cost, the hotels are saying. The AP has a good roundup on what the hoteliers are doing to battle the downturn in business.

UPDATE: The trade magazine Travel Weekly published a report today on how much hotel occupancy and room rates worldwide fell in February compared with a year ago. To help with the industry jargon in the article, ADR is average daily room rate, and RevPAR is revenue per available room, which is calculated by multiplying occupancy, or percentage of rooms occpied by paying customers, by the average daily rate. RevPAR is the basic measure of financial health in the lodging business.