HOTEL WITH DEEP HISTORY FLIESANEWFLAG
Gonzales’ Alcalde, where Bonnie and Clyde stayed, nowis in chain
Not many Texas hoteliers can say truthfully that Bonnie and Clyde hid from the law in one of their rooms or that Elvis Presley once paid a visit to the property. But Don Page can.
He’s the owner of the historic Alcalde Hotel in Gonzales, 73 miles east of San Antonio.
For as storied as his hotel’s past is, however, the reality today is that its business mostly depends on oil field workers. That means trying to survive the oil and gas industry’s boomand-bust cycle.
Right now, it’s bust, with the price of West Texas Intermediate crude at a little more than $40 per barrel and thousands of layoffs across the region’s Eagle Ford Shale play.
Page is looking to fill his 18 roomswith tourists to offset the volatility of the energy industry. So he turned to a chain operator.
On Thursday, Page and executives of OYO, the chain of budget leased and franchised ho
tels, announced that the Alcalde had signed a franchise agreement with the Indiabased operator.
The Alcalde Hotel was built in 1926.
The agreement gives Page access to the chain’s worldwide reservation system — and what the owner envisions will be tourists from around the world who might want to visit Gonzales for its rich history.
“The first shot at Texas independence happened 2 miles outside of town. The cannon that the Mexican army came to take sits in our museum,” he said, referring to the Gonzales Memorial Museum.
Not to mention the Bonnie and Clyde and Elvis connections.
Famed outlaws Bonnie and Clyde stayed in the hotel in January 1934, a few months before they were gunned down by law enforcement officers. According to legend, the couple jumped from one of the hotel’s second-floor windows to avoid arrest.
The hotel’s Bonnie and Clyde room features wanted posters of the couple on the wall and the names Bonnie and Clyde embroidered on the pillow cases.
In August 1955, Elvis checked into a roomat the hotel to take a nap and later hung out in the lobby the day of his concert in Gonzales, Page said. But he didn’t spend the night.
Thursday’s announcement at the hotel featured a singing Elvis impersonator.
Page managed the hotel for two years and then bought it in March, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down travel and bedeviled the oil industry. It cost him tens of thousands of dollars in bookings.
“It wasn’t the best timing,” he said.
While an unknown brand to many Americans, OYO operates more than 43,000 properties and 1 million rooms. It enters into agreements with existing hotels, many of them budget properties. It was founded in India in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, whowas just 19 at the time.
The company has grown in the U.S. from one hotel in Dallas in January 2019 to 300 nationwide, including nine in San Antonio,
said Raoul Hingle, its U.S. development head.
Page said OYO offered him the best deal of any hotel chain, with no upfront costs to become a franchisee and payments of just 9 percent of hotel revenues.
He said other hotel chains “wanted almost $40,000 upfront and 14 to 16 percent of your revenue.”
Hingle said OYO’s expansion plans include more hotels in San Antonio, with the possibility of acquiring one on the River Walk.
The company, backed by Japanese financial institution SoftBank’s Vision Fund and several venture capital firms, was valued at $10 billion in July 2019.
Hingle said the coronavirus has slowed OYO’s acquisition of U.S. hotels to eight a month.
“If it wasn’t for the pandemic, we would be double or triple that,” he said.
“The first shot at Texas independence happened 2 miles outside of town. The cannon that the Mexican army came to take sits in our museum.” Don Page, owner of the Alcalde Hotel in Gonzales, referring to the Gonzales Memorial Museum