A wave of new or dramatically renovated hotels will open their doors across the city this summer.
One of the great ladies of the Boston hotel world – renamed the old Ritz-Carlton on Arlington Street, the Taj, and now the Newbury – welcomed guests back after a complete renovation last week. In Post Office Square, Langham is slated to reopen next month, more than two years after it closed its doors for a major renovation. In the seaport, next to the convention center, there is the Omni Boston with 1,054 rooms.
All are debuting in a hotel landscape that looks very different from what developers and investors would have imagined at the start of construction.
“In a normal world, it would be really exciting to open all these new hotels,” said Tim Kirwan, a longtime hotel manager in Boston who is now a project consultant. “Now it feels like ‘What are you doing?'”
They do what hoteliers – known for their optimism even in difficult times – have always done. Executives involved in several debuts this summer point out that construction had its benefits during the pandemic. They did not face each other Decisions about dismissals or have to Hub for student accommodation. You can gradually start over and open up, over time, removing the inevitable kinks. Mike Jorgensen, general manager of the Omni, said it was finishing interior work, starting executive recruiting and booking smaller group events ahead of a scheduled September 1 opening.
“This is the fourth hotel I’ve opened,” he said. “It’s probably the most frustrating and rewarding thing you can do. And there is a lot that is out of your control, like a pandemic. The key is really just staying the course. “
Even so, the Omni is a convention center hotel largely designed to address the long-standing shortage of rooms near the huge hall, which tourism officials said has hampered Boston’s ability to host larger events. Some congresses are planned for late summer and autumn, and more are planned for 2022. However, it is not clear when the congress center is humming again regularly.
This is also a concern for Peter Palandjian. He is CEO of Intercontinental Real Estate, which owns the Hampton Inn and Homewood, just half a mile down Summer Street from the Convention Center. Convention traffic was predicted to be an important part of the property’s business, as was business travel associated with the burgeoning office market in the outer seaport. He is optimistic that both of them will come back at some point.
“It’s hard to tell when business travel is picking up and when the convention business is picking up,” he said. “I think it’s human nature; People want to be together. I’m just not sure when. “
Once that happens, business may look different than it did in pre-pandemic times.
Pinnacle vice president Sebastian Colella plans a future where people are still out on business, but less often when conventions are still happening but they’re smaller and more focused. This is likely to hurt larger business-minded hotels – with large ballrooms and restaurants that have a cost of spending money – more than budget conscious places or real luxury real estate.
“There is a lot of choice in Boston that we call upscale. Full service, lots of meeting space, ”said Colella. “They will be the slowest to recover.”
It could take years for rates to recover. While this year should be better than last year, Pinnacle predicts it could be 2025 before the average price of an overnight stay in Boston returns to levels two years ago, or $ 261.
“If we consider 2019 a high water mark, it will be a while,” Colella said.
This has given a break to the companies behind some hotels that were still in the planning stages at the time of the pandemic.
In February, developers of a planned 21-story hotel at 150 Kneeland Street near South Station asked the Boston Planning & Development Agency for approval to build condominiums instead, “in the face of seismic changes in the hospitality industry.” At least for now, a Kenmore Square approved hotel is also on hold.
But other hotels that are already underway – like a 2019 212-room Hilton near downtown Haymarket and the 33-story Raffles Boston Back Bay Hotel & Residences on Stuart Street – are still rising.
At Langham, which was closed for spring 2019 a $ 150 million renovationThere could certainly have been worse times than last year, said General Manager Michele Grosso. He is preparing to reopen on June 30th and recruiting staff – including some of the people who were laid off two years ago. Pre-reservations look decent, especially from weekend travelers, Grosso said. He’s been closely watching tourists return to downtown Boston over the past month.
This vacation trip is a priority for Paul Sacco, CEO of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. He admits it will take a while for business and international travel to revive, but he hopes local tourists can fill rooms this summer and urges the state to step up its marketing efforts to attract avid travelers to come to Massachusetts instead of anywhere else.
“It’s on the leisure market for now,” he said.
Tourism is already driving business in other cities. Grosso also oversees the Langham property in Chicago – a hotel market similar in many ways to Boston – and has been encouraged to improve the nightly business there as drive-through tourism rebounded this spring. However, improvements are relative in this strange new environment for the ailing hotel business.
“It’s been a dramatic change, especially in the last few weeks,” he said. “We now even reach 30 percent on weekdays [in Chicago]. Before COVID, those numbers would have been terrible, but right now they feel pretty good. “
Tim Logan can be reached at timothy.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.
