Hotel market is set to expand in Woodlands
Ninety-three boxes of pillows. Check. Threehundred coffeemakers, ironing boards, ice buckets and television sets. Check.
That’s part of a long list of final items The Westin The Woodlands, the latest full-service hotel to enter The Woodlands market, is marking off as it prepares to open its doors in the first week of March.
“We’ve started the final assembly process,” said Michael Speicher, the gen- eral manager of The Westin The Woodlands.
After more than a year of construction and interior build-out, the 12-story The Westin The Woodlands hotel is working to complete corporate and governmental inspections and receive its total occupancy permit before welcoming its first patrons.
The hotel is already accepting room reservations for as early as April, and reservations have been steady. Before the hotel
was able to accept reservations, it had dozens of handwritten names and reservation dates. Popular dates coincide with the Memorial Hermann North American Championship Texas Ironman triathlon, the Insperity Invitational golf tournament and other major music concert dates at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. The hotel is also attracting wedding and corporate meetings.
“Not having any prior experience in the market, we’re still seeing very good bookings,” Speicher said. “As good as it is, I can only imagine how phenomenal it will be when the day comes that oil prices go back up. I can tell how good it was here for the past two or three years when that business was still robust.”
The hotel was originally set to open in January, but hiring and training staff during the holidays caused some setbacks. To date, the hotel has hired about 160 staff members and is looking to hire a few dozen more.
The opening of The Westin The Woodlands comes on the heels of the 205-room Embassy Suites that opened in Hughes Landing days before the start of 2016.
The Woodlands Township is expected to take in $9.6 million in hotel oc- cupancy taxes for the 2016 fiscal year, a $2.4 million increase over its 2015 budget. The increase is tied to the opening of Embassy Suites and The West in The Woodlands, which will bring the number of rooms to 2,253 across 14 hotels in The Woodlands.
Next door to The Wood- lands in the small bedroom community of Oak Ridge North, residents are preparing for their first hotel. A Crowne Plaza Hotel is expected to go up on the southeast corner of Robinson Road and Interstate 45.
Louisiana-based developer MH 2A LLC finalized its 3.3-acre plat with the city after some back and forth in 2015. The first set of plans was reviewed by Oak Ridge North and returned to the developer for revisions. Plans have yet to be approved, but a groundbreaking is expected for the hotel and conference center in the second quarter of this year.
“The hotel represents the continued development and redevelopment of our commercial corridor. The hotel will provide quality, affordable service to the area businesses and tourism attractions,” said Vicky Rudy, city manager at Oak Ridge North. “The hotel and conference center will add property and sales-tax revenue to the city, which is always a benefit to our citizens as our city council continually strives to increase commercial value while keeping tax rates low.”
The six-story full-service Crowne Plaza Hotel is expected to have 184 rooms and rake in millions of dollars in revenue annually. The city estimates that it will receive about $490,000 annually in hotel occupancy tax alone at a 7 percent of net receipts, compared to The Woodlands which taxes hotels at 9 percent of net receipts. That revenue will be spent on drawing tourists, marketing the city, bringing convention business and more to attract visitors. The hotel is expected to generate commercial property and sales tax as well for the 1.3-square-mile city.
In nearby Shenandoah, the city’s first fullservice hotel is nearing completion. A Holiday Inn Shenandoah-The Woodlands is expected to be complete in the first quarter of this year and reservations are being accepted on or after April 24. The hotel features 152 rooms and 7,000 square feet of meeting space.
The new Holiday Inn will be the ninth hotel to open in Shenandoah’s approximately 2 square miles. Other hotels trying to make a move into Shenandoah include Aloft, Cambridge Suites and a FourPoints Sheraton.