Hotels seek the Hollywood limelight

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Now you can shoot your movie and hold the junket for it at the same place.

The historic Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena (formerly the Ritz-Carlton) has long had a connection to Hollywood. The landmark 380-room hotel built in 1907 has been a home to movie stars and celebrities and the site of numerous press junkets and events hosted by the major studios and television networks.

Now, in a further effort to bolster its profile, the hotel is billing itself as a film destination as well. The Langham Huntington, one of eight luxury hotels owned by a Hong Kong-based chain, recently hired a booking firm, Filming Direct, to promote the hotel to location managers and film producers. It already has hosted two TV pilots and the Walt Disney Pictures film ‘You Again.’ On Wednesday, it will draw the CBS drama ‘Criminal Minds,’ which will film scenes in the lounge, gym and Japanese gardens.

‘The entertainment business is a natural part of our overall revenue stream anyway,’’ said Jorgen Christensen, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. ‘So this is just a natural extension.’

In fact, filming can be a lucrative business for hotels, generating $15,000 to $25,000 a day in income. There’s also the intangible benefit of having your hotel featured in a popular TV show or movie. Think of the Beverly Wilshire, spotlighted in the movie ‘Pretty Woman.’

‘We are a relatively unknown brand, despite the hotel’s long history,’’ Christensen said. ‘This is another way for us to talk to the wider marketplace.’

The Langham Huntington isn’t the only hotel eager to capture a large slice of what has been a shrinking production pie in the L.A. area. Several other hotels around L.A. are looking to drum up film business to generate additional revenue, given the recession’s toll on tourism and the lucrative convention business.

To tap into that demand, Heidi Pierce-Zweimuller launched Filming Direct in 2002. The company specializes in lining up film shoots for hotels. Starting with the Millennium Biltmore Hotel downtown, the company’s client list has expanded to include the Radisson and Marriott hotels in Culver City and the Sofitel on Beverly Boulevard, where episodes of HBO’s ‘Entourage’ and ‘True Blood’ were filmed in the summer, along with a commercial for American Express.

Filming Direct, which gets a percentage of the film revenues that the hotels collect, will book an estimated $1 million in hotel revenues this year and expects that to grow to as much as $2 million next year, Zweimuller said.

‘More hotels are entertaining the idea of having filming in their hotels,’’ Zweimuller said. ‘They can up their revenue.’

-- Richard Verrier