Hotel boom comes to Alexandria/Pineville - Alexandria Town Talk
Several planned new projects in the two cities will add about 450 hotel rooms, boosting inventory by at least 18 percent. In downtown Alexandria, the Hotel Bentley and Holiday Inn Downtown Convention Center (formerly the Alexander Fulton Hotel) are undergoing renovations. Though new hotels have been constructed in recent years — notably Courtyard by Marriott in 2010 and Candlewood Suites in 2012 — the last time a comparable number of projects were underway at the same time was 2007, when four new hotels were built. “I think this is a good thing,” said Sherry Smith-Ellington, executive director of the Alexandria-Pineville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. “I think we do need new hotels. Jay Sharplin is managing partner for Southern Hospitality Group, which bought the former Fulton from the city and is renovating it for a planned reopening in early 2016. An experienced hotel operator, mainly in Natchitoches, who did extensive... Hotel development generally goes in 10-year cycles, he said, as new hotels are built and existing ones renovated to satisfy a more demanding customer base that wants a newer and better product. “Think about the last time Alexandria had a bunch of new projects come online,” Sharplin said. Source: www.thetowntalk.com
