Letters: Simple fix: Convert hotel rooms to condos

ISSUE | ATLANTIC CITY

Simple fix: Convert hotel rooms to condos

There's a simple way to get Atlantic City rolling again ("Financial fixer," Monday). It might cost a few dollars and need some marketing, but the system works, and has worked for years.

AC is a few hours' drive of nearly one-third of the nation's population and 20 percent of the country's business addresses, according to marketers who work with the Atlantic City Convention Center. Start converting hotel rooms to one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom condos. Get out the word that the resort town has five-star, family-friendly accommodations overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, plus the beach, boardwalk, an amusement park on the Steel Pier, the Convention Center for trade shows, and great golf courses nearby.

Then start marketing to attract trade shows, business meetings, golf outings, families with children, destination weddings, groom and bridesmaids parties, and tourists on weekend getaways.

Would this work? Look at the Shore towns south to Cape May, where families pay from $2,000 to more than $4,000 a week for summer rentals.

It's the same all along the Atlantic Coast - Rehoboth Beach, Del.; Ocean City, Md.; the Outer Banks, N.C.; and Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, and Kiawah Island, S.C. Each of these tourist magnets offer amenities that Atlantic City can match or surpass - and then throw in first-class entertainment and casino gambling.

If you've got it, flaunt it - and Atlantic City's got it in spades.

|Bill Cole, Plymouth Meeting, billcole211@gmail.com