Biden, Wilmington hotels prepare to host international leaders

WILMINGTON — Wilmington has been the scene of some interesting phone calls over the past week as hotels field room requests from international callers preparing to attend the fourth in-person Quad Leaders Summit hosted by President Joe Biden.

Greater Wilmington Convention & Visitors Bureau Executive Director Jennifer Boes told the Delaware Business Times that the meeting, to be held on Saturday, Sept. 21, came as a surprise to many. Some reports have even stated that the meeting itself will be held at Biden’s residence.

The Quad Leaders Summit will bring the  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the First State. The three nations’ leaders, including the president, make up a diplomatic partnership known as the Quad Alliance. The first Summit was held at the White House in Washington, D.C., in 2021.

Since then, the Quad alliance has met a total of eight times to date as their governments continue to meet and coordinate at all levels, according to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The alliance has been key to Biden’s long-term strategy to break China’s influence on an international scale, according to news reports.

“The Quad Leaders Summit will focus on bolstering the strategic convergence among our countries, advancing our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and delivering concrete benefits for partners in the Indo-Pacific in key areas. These include health security, natural disaster response, maritime security, high-quality infrastructure, critical and emerging technology, climate and clean energy, and cybersecurity,” Jean-Pierre said in a press release.

The next meeting is slated to return to India, but in the meantime, local leaders like Boes are preparing for the short-term influx of travelers.

“It is really exciting and it was a big surprise. I’m very glad that it’s going to take place here,” she told DBT. “We started hearing from hotels at the end of last week that they were getting calls for room reservations related to this, but it hadn’t been reported in the news yet. So, I was just kind of keeping an eye on the news and then it started to pop up in the international news over last weekend.”

While she didn’t know specifically which hotels or other area amenities would be utilized by those traveling to the area for the Quad Leaders Summit, she said she heard that India alone is already preparing to book around 40 hotel rooms for the event.

“I think it’s a huge [economic] boom again for Greater Wilmington. As I read in news accounts, it was supposed to be in India and then it switched last minute to Wilmington, so I think it’s going to be very good for our area in terms of revenue, in terms of our hotels specifically, and then also we’re going to get the region’s name again in the international press.”

Ultimately, every major event hosted in the city is a boost to the local economy, she added.

“We’re a small state in a small region, but yet we’re drawing this major world event to our city,” Boes said. “It’s good for business, it’s good for the hotels and it’s good for the restaurants because it’s not just the world leaders and their teams that are coming in for these things, it’s also the media and they have to eat and they have to have a place to sleep, so it’s very good in that aspect. And also, it’s just great exposure for us as a region in terms of a place for leisure travel and a place to do business because it’s getting our name out there throughout the world.”