Published September 2003

Longtime Holiday Inn has new affiliation, names

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

The south Everett hotel long known as the Holiday Inn Hotel & Conference Center is getting a name change this fall.

Make that “names” change.

Ending a decades-long affiliation with the Holiday Inn chain, the hotel at 101 128th St. SW has entered into a contract with Choice Hotels International that will enable the facility to market under two of Choice’s hotel lines: Comfort Inn & Suites and Quality Inn, General Manager Bob Keller said.

“Choice has been doing a very good job in developing their brand and giving support (to its affiliates).” Keller said of the decision to leave the Holiday Inn brand, which the hotel had been affiliated with since its construction in 1969.

“Choice can provide a much higher return for the hotel as far as reservation contribution,” Keller added, saying that in recent years the full-service hotel had seen a downturn in reservation contributions from the Holiday Inn franchise, possibly due to more focus being shifted to the Holiday Inn Express brand.

That midpriced, no-frills alternative has popped up across Snohomish County in the past decade to include locations in Bothell, Lynnwood, Marysville and Monroe. Now, a new one is planned for south Everett — across the freeway from the present Holiday Inn hotel and conference center.

“They don’t have the high labor costs that we do with all of our services,” Keller said of Holiday Inn Express, which, like the Holiday Inn brand, is owned by InterContinental Hotels Group. “We feel like we’re competing against our own company.”

So during the past year, knowing that the hotel’s franchise license would expire in June, the property’s owners and management evaluated its position, Keller said, deciding to go with Choice.

As for the two hotel names, the plan is to market each of the hotel’s two buildings separately, Keller said.

The four-story, 84-room building on the south side of the property will take on the Comfort Inn & Suites moniker and have a corporate-client focus, Keller said.

The facility’s 164-room main building, with its indoor swimming pool, dining area and 15,000 square feet of conference space will become a Quality Inn marketed toward group business, sports teams and the like, he added.

Each hotel will have its own front-desk and housekeeping staff as well as separate sales managers, Keller said, while the accounting department and department heads will remain in charge of both operations.

“We’ll run it like two separate hotels within a management company,” he explained.

Keller said he hopes to have the conversion completed — new signage up, reservation systems in place and all of the programs that the Comfort and Quality brands offer, including the Choice Privileges customer rewards program — by the first part of October.

Along with the change in names, the hotel plans to spend between $500,000 and $750,000 in remodeling projects this fall, including:

• Creating a new lobby for the Comfort Inn & Suites building.
• Installing new carpets for several of the hotel rooms.
• Enhancing hotel suites with larger desks.
• Replacing all the guestroom television sets with larger, 25-inch sets and expanding channel choices.
• Installing doors on all of the closets of Comfort Inn & Suites guestrooms.

The projects will follow an extensive exterior renovation project as well as the installation of new carpets, drapery and artwork for the four-story building that the hotel completed a year and a half ago.

The investment made in the hotel reflects the optimism held by the hotel’s owners, brothers Naju and Feroze Lalji, and management to Snohomish County and its future, Keller said.

“We are having a much better year this year,” he added, noting that the occupancy rate for July was above 53 percent, with the rate looking even higher for August. By comparison, the hotel had an occupancy rate below 40 percent in July 2002 and 40 percent for August of that year.

“We feel that the business is going to get better in the county,” he said. “We feel we have a good base clientele of very loyal customers.”

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