When the Westin Charlotte opens its doors today for the first guests, it may mark a new era for the center city.

From the trademarked Heavenly Bed with white duvet to the martinis at the sleek Bar 10 lounge to the Jerusalem sandstone in the lobby floor, the Westin's managers hope to stamp their brand on a city that has lacked a convention hotel.

"I think we will raise the bar for the whole city," said Jon Kimball, the hotel's general manager.

The $143 million glass tower, the city's largest hotel, will bring more life to the quieter south side of uptown with 700 rooms, a high-windowed lounge, Ember Grille and outdoor cafe.

Across the street from the Charlotte Convention Center, it will dispatch flocks of visitors to the new shops and restaurants emerging at the nearby Ratcliffe on the Green condominiums. It eventually will connect patrons to an uptown arena under construction to the north and the entertainment and shopping district of South End, once a trolley is running.

Not everyone is cheering the Westin's opening, which was delayed four times since the fall because of problems with rain and construction. For the city's existing hoteliers, the 20 percent overnight jump in downtown hotel rooms will only make lean times tougher.

"We always had the biggest ballroom and the biggest hotel in all the city up until tomorrow," said Jeffrey Fuller, general manager of the 613-room Adam's Mark, four blocks from the Convention Center. "This will be a big change in the hotel's life and in my life."

Fuller and some other uptown hotel managers predict the Westin will cannibalize business until at least 2004 because of a slowdown in business travel. From then on, they are hoping it will draw new conventions to town that will lift everyone's fortunes.

"It is easy to argue there is no demand for those rooms," said Ben Thorman, general manager for the 60-room historic Dunhill Hotel on North Tryon Street. "The Westin is designed as a convention hotel; let's hope it draws in conventions."

To a certain extent, the hotel has already been a success. The Westin has enabled Visit Charlotte, the former Charlotte Convention & Visitors Bureau, to recruit larger meetings in the past year. The average size of a convention booked in the city is up 21 percent year-to-date, to about 1,253 room-nights at a convention's peak, and growing.

For uptown Charlotte, conventions and business travel may pose the most tourism potential. Without San Antonio's Riverwalk or Denver's mountains or Atlanta's nightlife, the city has less immediate appeal to vacationers. But as home to two of the nation's top five banks and US Airways' largest hub, it is an ideal business location. Moreover, happy conventioneers sometime return to vacation with their families.

The city made the hotel a priority in 1999, after losing a bid to lure the 2000 Republican National Convention, in part because of the lack of nearby hotel rooms. It wanted the project enough to contribute $16 million toward its construction.

Even as the Westin was rising from the ground at Stonewall and College streets, the hotel was changing the city's prospects.

"This gave us something else to talk about," said Rex White, national director of sales for Visit Charlotte.

The bureau's nine-person sales force has been revisiting groups that overlooked Charlotte, explaining how much easier it is to get conventioneers to and from events and to book large blocks of rooms.

Standard rooms go for around $149, while the rate for the two 25th-floor corner presidential suites, named Polk and Jackson, is $750 per night. The Westin's touches include high-quality sheets, dataports and flat-screen televisions.

John Portman Jr., the renowned architect who built Detroit's Renaissance Center and Hyatt Regency Atlanta, designed the city's latest addition to the skyline.

The hotel's main restaurant features a two-course $29 prix fixe dinner menu. Bar 10 has a European feel where sports junkies will have to share one discreetly placed plasma TV screen.

Diane Hitzfeld was impressed Tuesday when she got a glimpse at the $165,000 chandelier inside the lobby. She had swung by to check out where she and 175 fellow conventioneers from the Presbyterian Church in America will be staying this June for their annual convention. The church, which has booked 1,000 rooms in the city, was drawn to Charlotte in part by the new hotel.

Hitzfeld's not concerned about scenery or nightlife. "When we plan a meeting it is to do business," she said.

Managers at the Westin say they are determined to set a standard for "contemporary luxury." General manager Kimball recruited his lead chef and food and beverage director from smaller resort properties such as Ritz-Carlton and the Woodlands Resort Inn in South Carolina in his bid to create the state's finest hotel and dining.

"Bar 10 will be the focal point to the beginning of the professionals nightlife," said Wayne Malagon, the food and beverage chief and manager of the hotel's Ember Grille. "We want them to finish the deal down here, celebrate with a martini. And if we do our job right they will finish it at Ember Grille."

To get people in the door, the Westin will host many local events, starting with its grand opening Monday. Meanwhile, many uptown hoteliers are preparing for tougher times.

"Our next 90 days are not as cheery and blissful as we would have hoped," said Fuller at the Adam's Mark. "Hopefully it will be shorter term pain and long-term gain."