Local tourism leaders are working toward a goal of 21.7 million visitors to Wake County by 2028. To get there, they’re playing matchmaker, connecting hotel developers and towns.
At the recent Wake County Hotel Development Summit, organizers Visit Raleigh, JLL, and Wake County Economic Development convened all 12 county municipalities and more than 30 hotel developers.
Each municipality shared the same information coming into the summit, compiled with JLL, said Loren Gold, executive vice president of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau.
A standardized table of contents included a town overview, development sites available, current hotel supply, development pipeline, community demographics, economic overview, leading industries, and development considerations–how towns would work with the hotel developers.
Next, JLL reached out to the hotel community locally and nationally, about 720 developers, to get interest: “that’s where the matching started,” Gold said.
Speed-dating style, developers met with town teams from economic development, planning, and management.
While some municipalities were more open to different hotel types, Cary, Holly Springs and Apex were more definitive in what they’d pursue, Gold said.
- Cary is more interested in full-service hotels (think restaurants and meeting space on-site), some types with 200 or more rooms, and boutique hotels like The Mayton in Downtown Cary.
- Holly Springs is looking for hotel types that can support its growing life sciences industry’s business travel needs, including full-service hotels that can support conferences and larger events.
- In Apex, the planned children’s hospital would bring pediatric patients from the state and region, and families will need a place to stay. UNC Health and Duke Health have said a hotel with meeting and conference space will be important, Gold said.
- Closer to Salem Street in Downtown Apex, there’s interest in a small boutique hotel, with perhaps 40-60 keys, he said. Think of a fun, experiential hotel with a food and beverage business on-site.
The current inventory of Western Wake towns’ hotel rooms varies. Morrisville, with its proximity to the airport and Research Triangle Park, has the most at 26 hotels and 2,918 total rooms. Cary is the next highest with 23 hotels and just over 2,800 rooms total.
Fast-growing Apex and Holly Springs have fewer; Apex has six hotels and 530 total rooms, Holly Springs has two hotels with 228 total rooms.
“You really have to be thinking three, four, five years ahead,” Gold said.
The summit news comes shortly after 2025 tourism numbers were released, showing that Wake County occupancy decreased by 2.9% year to date. Although, with new hotels built, the actual rooms sold decreased closer to 1.3%.
Hotel occupancy in 2025 was 67.7%, higher than the state average of 61.3% and the national average of 62.3%.
Gold isn’t concerned about the dip. The market is slightly off, not because of the attractiveness of the Greater Raleigh area, but because of nationwide factors like the economy and a decrease in business travel.
“There are other markets that are seeing bigger drops in demand,” he said.
Wake County continues to see a strong market for in-state overnight visitors, youth and amateur athletics travel, and group travel.
The benefit of more visitors for residents means projects funded by hospitality taxes, rooms for friends and family, and in-town meeting spaces.
Hospitality taxes, which are proceeds from a county-wide tax on hotel rooms (nearly all tourism-driven) and prepared food and beverages (about 23 percent is paid by visitors).
Hospitality tax funds go back into supporting facilities that drive tourism and economic impact, like local arts, culture, sports, and convention facilities.
The most recent projects to get funding approved include support for a Carolina Ballet facility in Cary’s South Hills, Triangle Aquatic Center’s hospitality suites, cricket field improvements in Morrisville, a stage at Apex’s town campus, and improvements to North Main Athletic Complex (formerly Ting Park) in Holly Springs.
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