The Alamo City’s hotel market has recovered faster from the sector’s Covid crisis than other Texas cities, and a local firm is preparing to cash in on that fact.
San Antonio-based hotel firm BH Hospitality Management has recently filed plans for a $5.6 million, 147-key, 122,900 square foot Homewood Suites Hotel at The Rim, the central shopping center of San Antonio and one of the largest mixed-use shopping centers in the state, spanning over 2 million square feet.
The construction phase is expected to begin in December, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation filing, and is scheduled for completion in May 2024.
BH Hospitality is one of the largest hotel developers in the state, with over 20 completed projects in San Antonio, Austin, Waco, and other cities. They already have another hotel in San Antonio located downtown along the Riverwalk.
Currently, BH Hospitality has about 6 other projects under development in addition to the Homewood Suites project at The Rim, including Staybright Suites development in Waco, a TRU by Hilton development in New Braunfels, as well as a Home2 Suites/TRU by Hilton Hobby Airport development in Houston, which appears to be the company’s first project in the Bayou City.
Earlier this year data showed that hotel revenue in San Antonio was nearly $20 million more than what the city generated in 2019 before the pandemic, coming in at $335.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. That topped the markets of Houston, Dallas, and Austin. With just under 3 million hotel nights booked in the greater San Antonio metro area over the last three months of 2021, that marked a nearly 8 percent increase in bookings compared to the same period before the pandemic in 2019. Austin was the closest to San Antonio with a 1.1 percent increase.
However, the Dallas area seems to still be leading the charge when it comes to hotel development this year, topping the rest of the nation in projects in the pipeline in the first quarter of this year with some 165 projects totaling 19,730 rooms, topping Atlanta’s with 135 projects, Los Angeles’s 123 projects, and New York’s with 122 projects.
Dallas also boasted the highest occupancy increase in the U.S. since 2019 back in July, seeing an increase of 5.8 percent in the week of June 19 through June 25 compared to the same period in 2019.