Hotel market growth
Chattanooga area hotel revenues:› 2009 — $127.2 million› 2010 — $149.1 million› 2011 — $162.3 million› 2012 — $163.8 million› 2013 — $163.4 million› 2014 — $176.1 millionSource: STR Inc.
The Dynamic Group was looking at building a downtown Chattanooga hotel in 2008, but the worst economic downturn since the Depression turned out the lights on those plans.
Still, the partners in the Chattanooga group said Wednesday they didn’t give up on their vision, and they officially opened a 140-room, $19 million Holiday Inn and Suites that’s the newest entry to downtown’s hotel market.
“It’s been a long journey for us,” said Bob Bhagat, the group’s chief financial officer, about the Chestnut and Fifth streets hotel. “Finally, the doors are open.”
Bob Doak, the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau chief, said Dynamic Group didn’t look back, but rather ahead.
“They’re not going to go out and spend tens of millions of dollars without knowing the future of Chattanooga is in a place that’s going to be good for them,” he said about the group’s partners, which include Bhagat, Chairman Charles Amin and his son and CEO Roshan Amin.
As downtown Chattanooga adds the new hotel space, even more is planned.
Work is underway on a five-story, 90-room upscale boutique hotel near the Walnut Street Bridge by Chattanooga-based Vision Hospitality Group.
A 200-room Westin is slated for the Gold Building at Pine Street and M.L. King Boulevard by Chattanooga brothers Ken and Byron DeFoor, and out-of-town developers who bought the Chattanooga Bank Building at Eighth and Market last year have plans for a 150-room hotel.
STR Inc., a travel research firm, doesn’t break out downtown figures, but Chattanooga’s hotel market shows that total room occupancy is up since 2013 when it was 56.8 percent.
Last year, occupancy was 59.3 percent, STR figures show. Through October 2015, occupancy is 66.9 percent, up from 60.9 percent in the same period a year ago, according to STR.
While Dynamic Group owns a handful of hotels in the region, the partners also are involved in a pair of plastics plants. Arch Plastics is located in Chattanooga, while another plant is near Athens, Ga., said Roshan Amin.
The hotels and the plants employ about 2,500 people.
Doak said Charles Amin, who opened a Hampton Inn in the 1980s, was just the second minority developer in the Hilton family to open that brand of hotel.
Amin termed the debut of the Holiday Inn “a dream to add more beauty to downtown.”
Roshan Amin said the full-service hotel is well positioned near a gateway to downtown. The hotel is expected to draw people interested in the riverfront as well as conventioneers, he said.
Also, the company CEO said, the area needed more than Marriott and Hilton branded hotels, noting the Chattanooga Choo Choo used to be a Holiday Inn.
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke cited a groundbreaking Tuesday a few blocks away for a 125-unit apartment building and other central city development, calling the investment “unparalleled.”
“People want to be where the activity is,” he said about the new hotel.
Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said tourism in the area employs about 8,500 people.
“We’re looking at many more opportunities like this in the future,” he said.
Doak said officials aren’t seeing a saturation of hotel rooms downtown.
“The market always seeks its level,” he said, adding there’s no indication the sector has reached its peak.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.