Future hotel bookings by convention groups fell slightly in the last six months of last year, though officials with Baltimore's tourism agency said they still hope to meet an annual target.

Visit Baltimore, the sales and marketing organization that works to bring business and leisure travelers to the city, reported Thursday that 88 groups booked conventions and meetings during the last three months of 2009. Of those, 19 were health-care related - a market segment that Tom Noonan, the agency's president and chief executive, aimed to attract when he began his job in 2007.

In all, Visit Baltimore booked 244,974 "room nights" in city hotels during the last six months of 2009, from groups expected to contribute $145.5 million to the local economy. That compares to 272,593 room nights during the last six months of 2008, from groups expected to contribute $149 million to the economy.

Some recent bookings include:

•The American Society of Mass Spectrometry, which is expected to bring 7,000 attendees in 2014 for an economic impact of $8.2 million.

•The American Nurses Credentialing Center, expected to bring 7,000 attendees in 2011 for an economic impact of $5 million.

•The American Occupational Therapy Association, expected to bring 4,000 attendees in 2014 for an economic impact of $3 million.

Visit Baltimore has a goal of booking 525,000 room nights during fiscal 2010, which ends June 30. The agency surpassed its fiscal 2009 goal of 475,000 room nights, booking more than 520,000.

Noonan said he is optimistic that Visit Baltimore will reach its 2010 goal because officials hope to book several large groups that would hold citywide conventions and need a total of 80,000 room nights.

"I feel pretty confident," he said. "We're in the hunt."

Noonan said Baltimore is benefiting from the opening of several downtown hotels in the past two years, including the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel and the Hotel Monaco. The additional guest rooms and meeting spaces in the new hotels have helped the city land large groups that couldn't be accommodated before, he explained.

Noonan added that Baltimore is a "natural fit" for medical and scientific meetings because more than 70,000 health care professionals work in the region and the city is home to highly respected institutions, such as the University of Maryland Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Medical and scientific groups are especially desirable from an economic standpoint, he said, because they often have bigger budgets than other groups. As a result, "they usually stay longer and spend more money in the city," he said.