ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 11, 1997 TAG: 9701130099
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
FOR TRAVELERS STAYING for several nights or more, the hotels would offer rooms and service more like apartments.
Two more hotels are proposed near Roanoke Regional Airport, both featuring extended-stay quarters with kitchens and amenities to resemble the comforts of home.
The property closest to groundbreaking would be called the MainStay Suite Hotel and have about 90 rooms. City officials are within weeks of approving the project off Ferndale Drive, said Tom Tasselli, development review coordinator for Roanoke.
Studio Ventures, a Wichita, Kan., hotel developer, plans to build it under a franchise pact with Choice Hotels International, which also owns the Clarion Hotel Roanoke Airport, formerly the Sheraton Inn Roanoke Airport.
The second proposed project, by Extended Stay America Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is less certain. Planners and the company are trying to agree on a means to control flooding risks at the site along Ordway Drive, which could take several months, Tasselli said.
The projects are within a few hundred yards of each other and the Clarion Hotel and Roanoke Airport Marriott. They would create a concentration of 650 rooms within a few minutes' drive from the airport and interstate highways. The site is not far from another hotel-in-the making, the 126-room Amerisuites, which is one of three hotels under construction in the Roanoke Valley. Two hotels have opened since early November - a 78-room Comfort Suites at Ridgewood Farm in Salem and a 43-room Country Inn and Suites by Carlson in Roanoke County.
Extended-stay hotels are springing up all over the country, in recognition that more people are working or training away from home or changing communities to change jobs, said Mike Wilson, vice president of marketing at Extended Stay America. These are people who want to settle down in a hotel for a few weeks or months, officials said.
"We're finding a very, very good response to our product," said Wilson, whose company opened its first 45 hotels in the past year.
There is usually no minimum stay, but guests who book a room for at least four or five days pay a lower charge per day. Rates for the new Roanoke hotels haven't been announced; but in the Tidewater market, extended-day hotels charge $40 a night or $200 a week.
Extended-stay establishments cater to business and leisure travelers, people between jobs, and even spouses who have temporarily moved out of their homes because of marital troubles, said Jim Anhut, vice president and brand manager for the MainStay Suite facilities at Choice International, based in Silver Spring, Md.
The percentage of hotel stays longer than five nights is way up, Anhut said, but he didn't have figures.
In Virginia, extended-stay hotels are ``one of the most popular facilities to be building. Richmond is adding in one section of town 900 rooms. The majority are extended-stay also,'' said Bob Ramsey, who directs the Virginia Hospital & Travel Association.
The business traveler who rents a typical hotel room, with a coffee maker and desk, and plans to work in the room finds himself ``sitting on the side of the bed making some phone calls. Our suite is more like your home. There's space to spread out. There's a living area with a recliner chair and maybe a sofa sleeper,'' Anhut said of Choice.
At the single MainStay in operation, in a Dallas suburb, there's also a big kitchen table that doubles as a work area. Guests get their own phone number, which rings in the room, and a voice mail machine to catch messages when they are out.
The kitchen contains a full-size refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, pots and pans, silverware and even plastic dishes for leftovers.
The maid makes the bed and takes out the trash daily, but cleans only once a week to avoid disrupting the sense of home the typical guest creates on an extended stay, Anhut said.
William Carder, who manages the Patrick Henry Hotel in downtown Roanoke, which devotes some of its attention to the extended-stay market, said the region draws a limited number of people who need a temporary home until they start a job - the type of guest Carder defined as the classic extended-stay customer.
To succeed here, he said, any new extended-stay hotels will need to cater to corporate and leisure travelers who prefer the comfort of an apartment.
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