The apparent uptick in the lodging industry economy prompted the owners of hotel properties in Flagstaff and Prescott to buy yet another hotel.
Ponderosa Hotel Management LLC, which owned two hotels in Flagstaff and two in Prescott, recently closed the purchase for the Quality Inn located at 1105 E. Sheldon, Prescott.
President and CEO of Ponderosa Hotels Management Brad Christensen says they are pleased to add a new hotel to their management portfolio. “We will now have five hotels in two thriving and very popular destinations – Flagstaff and Prescott – in central and Northern Arizona. We’re truly banking on a strong tourist and travel economy.”
He says he and his partners closed the purchase of the 68-room hotel the last day of the year – Dec. 31 – “…literally just before the New Year began.”
The hotel owners will spend more than $1 million to renovate and upgrade their latest acquisition.
Remodeling already has begun. Contractor Kevin Hinton, owner of Prescon Enterprises, LLC, says he will be gutting the complete property – “…just the outer skin will be left.”
Hinton, who has remodeled and maintained at least four other properties for Ponderosa Hotel Management, says the entire building will be renovated. Two guestrooms will be eliminated and that square footage used to expand the front lobby, breakfast area and kitchen and storage, according to plans created by Todd Marolf, owner-architect of Headwaters in Prescott.
The exterior will be completely restuccoed and resurfaced.
All interior furnishings will be new, too.
“The only surface that won’t be touched is the roof,” said Christensen. “We’re adding an attractive ‘port a cache’ – a neat name for a covered entry – and we’re totally resurfacing and renovating the swimming pool.”
The owners anticipate the complete refurbishing will take four months.
“We hope to open around the first of May. We’ll still be the Quality Inn, though, one of the 11 brands under the larger Choice Hotels worldwide lodging options,” Christensen said.
Their two Flagstaff properties also are listed under the Choice Hotels franchise. They are among the more than 6,300 Choice Hotel located in more than 35 countries.
Christensen and his partners in Ponderosa Hotel Management – his wife, Margo, vice president for marketing and public relations, and Mark and Leslie French, who live in Prescott Valley and serve as vice president for finance and human resources executives – see their latest property as being one that will “…appeal to the leisure, recreational and family travelers. We think the price sensitive traveler will like this option.”
Margo Christensen is confident their new acquisition will be successful.
“Our view is that prospects for travel and tourism throughout central and Northern Arizona look bright. Each year has been busier for the past few years. We know that Prescott and Flagstaff are both high on the list of places people want to go, especially those from foreign countries,” she said.
The two other hotels owned by Ponderosa Hotel Management are both Marriott International-branded properties. One is Marriott Residence Inn, located on Hwy 69 leading into Prescott. The other is Marriott Springhill Suites, located in downtown Prescott, a couple of blocks north of the Courthouse Plaza.
The market for the Marriott properties tends more toward the luxury, business, professional and corporate traveler than vacation adventurers, according to the Christensens.
Marriott International has 3,900 hotel properties and 18 brands internationally.
It Began in Flagstaff, Continues in Prescott – and Then?
Brad Christiansen began his Arizona hotel acquisitions in 1988 by initially buying the 85-room Comfort Inn near the I-17 and I-40 interchange. He added to his Flagstaff holdings in 2013, when he bought the 58-room Sleep Inn, also located near the same interchange. Following its remodeling, it was reopened in April 2014.
It was in Flagstaff where he met and married Margo, who earlier had been a student in hotel and restaurant management at Northern Arizona University. Since then, the two and their partners continued adding to their hotel portfolio.
They branched out to Prescott and built and opened the 105-room Springhill Suites in September 1999. They later built and opened the 92-room Residence Inn in Prescott in September 2007.
The Christensens have long been supportive of the Chambers of Commerce and local hospitality and tourism organizations in both Flagstaff and Prescott.
They said that they “really would like to add a new hotel to our portfolio every year or so. It really depends on what opportunities present themselves and where. We had two really good options in the past couple of years – one in Flagstaff, the other in Prescott. We’ll just have to hope some good openings come along.”
All indications are that the hotel-hospitality industry will continue its upward economic swing. The U.S. hotel industry ended 2014 with an estimated 4.5 percent increase in demand. That is the largest increase since 2011, according to STR, Inc. and other industry forecasts.
Those same trends seem true in both Flagstaff and Prescott, and throughout Arizona, Arizona Office of Tourism (AOT) data reveal.
“Prospects for tourism in this region look bright,” Margo Christensen said. “We’ve a substantial investment in our Flagstaff and Prescott hotels. We employ somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 to 130 associates, plus the management company staff – general managers, assistant general managers and sales and marketing personnel to handle the collective 406 hotel rooms. Ours is a pretty good payroll scattered between these two communities.”
She hopes the state will continue its support of tourism.
“We are somewhat dependent on state tourism funding support in this area, so an increase for AOT would really help. That will be a decision made by Governor Ducey and the Arizona legislature. But a lot of people really depend on a vibrant tourism economy to keep the state moving forward economically.” QCBN
By Ray Newton
Quad Cities Business News