Hotelier has no reservations about growth spurt

Confidence in the greater Lakewood Ranch area as a tourist stop combined with its growth in the sports tourism industry are proving the perfect mix for local hoteliers.

Before the 122-room Hyatt Place Sarasota/Lakewood Ranch opened April 13, it already had the last weekend in April fully booked.

“We have two weekends each in May and June sold out, as well,” said Cecilia Maddi, director of sales for Hyatt Place Sarasota/Lakewood Ranch. “There’s more to come.”

The Hyatt Place Sarasota/Lakewood Ranch, located at 6021 Exchange Way, Lakewood Ranch, didn’t start taking online bookings until April 19.

Although the Hyatt Place brand attracts corporate travelers, Maddi said it also makes accommodations for extended-stay travelers. The hotel is positioned to serve both, with its proximity to Interstate 75, dining and shopping, as well as easy access to sporting venues such as Premier Sports Campus and Nathan Benderson Park.

As an example, the USRowing Youth Nationals event June 9-11 at Nathan Benderson Park will account for one of the fully booked weekends.

“It’s the perfect mix (of travelers),” Maddi said.

On the west side of I-75, at the southwest corner of Cattlemen and DeSoto roads, Benderson Development’s hotel division, Buffalo Lodging Associates, also is preparing to open a Homewood Inn and Suites in June.

Todd Mathes, Benderson’s director of development, said the hotel will be the first in a series of five hotels it plans eventually to open south of University Parkway adjacent to The Mall at University Town Center, because it believes the demand exists.

“In the next couple years, we expect to open two more, both on the east side of the mall,” Mathes said. “We haven’t started the engineering process yet, but we have a location identified in the overall east side development. The first one probably will get started 18 months after (the Homewood Inn and Suites) opens.”

Mathes said Benderson believes the demand exists for additional hotels in the UTC area because of strong occupancy rates at its existing hotels — a Courtyard Marriott and Hampton Inn and Suites — on either side of Cooper Creek Boulevard, north of University Parkway.

Benderson sees the UTC area as its own niche market, different than the customer base in downtown Sarasota or in Lakewood Ranch. And each hotel brand can target a different piece of the hotel market. The soon-to-open Homewood Inn and Suites, for example, targets extended-stay travelers with its kitchenette, living area and other features.

“We are firm believers in the hotel market here,” Mathes said. “Growth will bolster that demand, between new residential and office. We are very optimistic.”

Ron Kendell, president of Buffalo Lodging Associates, agreed that growth will dictate demand and that UTC is its own market area for hotels.

“We have the ability to build more, and I think we have the primary locations,” he said. “We’re prudent in how we do it. We’ll develop according to the demands. We’ll use whatever resources are available to guide us. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to overbuild the market.”

Kirk Boylston, president of Lakewood Ranch Commercial, a division of Lakewood Ranch developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, said Lakewood Ranch also will build hotels according to market demand. Boylston said only two potential hotel sites are identified. One is adjacent to the Hyatt Place Sarasota/Lakewood Ranch, which he plans to begin marketing more heavily now that the Hyatt Place is open, and the other will be near the northeast corner of State Road 70 and Lakewood Ranch Boulevard within SMR’s future biotech campus,  Collaborate Opportunities for Research and Exploration, dubbed CORE.

Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Manatee County Convention And Visitors Bureau, said the addition of hotels is being dictated purely by demand. In Manatee County, four new hotels, including Hyatt Place, are coming online, but each services a different area of the county.