With three new hotels in some stage of early planning or development, Columbus soon will have more than a thousand rooms available for guest rentals, a perfect number said Columbus-Lowndes Development Link CEO Joe Higgins.
“We did a study a few years ago that showed that Columbus was hotel poor by four hotels,” Higgins explained. “The study showed we needed more full-service and high-end hotels to cater to the needs of the corporate travelers.”
Higgins noted the April 2011 opening of the 85-room Fairfield Inn and Suites, with 16 suites, dropped the number to three.
Located on 18th Street, the Fairfield Inn, which is one of three properties from Columbus developer Mark Castleberry, will soon be joined by a 90-room Hampton Inn and a 110-room Courtyard by Marriot, which will include a bistro and Starbucks coffee shop.
Another hotel is under construction on property located next to Belk department store on Highway 45. Co-owner Sunny Sethi said the property, originally zoned for a Hampton Inn, will hold a hotel with 99 rooms.
“The three hotels (Castleberry) is doing and the one the Sethis are building will put us were we need to be,” Higgins said. “I think people underestimate this hotel stuff. When people come to town to do business, they want somewhere nice to stay, and that will bring them back to Columbus.”
A study conducted by the Mississippi Development Authority’s Office of Tourism noted 890 hotel rooms and 39 bed-and-breakfast rooms in Columbus and Lowndes County, part of 57,956 hotel rooms across the state. The average daily rate for corporate property rooms is $76 and $62 for state-licensed casinos. Corporate properties have a 58 percent occupancy level.
Local hotel owners don’t think the new hotels will adversely affect existing properties.
“We are completely booked this weekend,” River Chase Inn General Manager Deborah Stevenson said Friday. “Between (Mississippi University for Women’s) homecoming and Super Bulldog Weekend in Starkville, we are full. I see more hotels as a good thing for everyone. We need more rooms in Columbus. We’ve had to turn away 35 rooms today. We start to get busy around April and we will stay this way, until the end of the year.”
Nicki Cole, general Manager of The Wingate by Wyndham hotel, agreed on the need for more hotel rooms.
“We are also booked this weekend,” Cole said. “We could definitely use more rooms in town. More rooms will make more opportunities for everyone.”
Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Nancy Carpenter also cited Super Bulldog Weekend — events surrounding the spring football game for Mississippi State University — as one of several sporting events important to the area’s hotel industry.
“They are hoping for 30,000 people for the spring game and the Sugarland concert,” Carpenter explained. “All of these people can’t stay in Starkville, so many will stay in Columbus. (Southeastern Conference) football is huge in this area. Area hotels are full when Mississippi State and Alabama have home football games. We get the spillover from Starkville and Tuscaloosa. We also have teams stay with us when they are playing Mississippi State. The Alabama football team stayed at the Holiday Inn last year and the players were bused to our movie theaters. This shows people spend money when they stay in our hotels. We had a caravan of 50 people from South Carolina stay in one of our hotels, during football season. Another big draw is our fishing tournaments. These fishermen stay in our hotels, many times for about a week. There is definitely a need for more high-end hotels in Columbus.”
The four new hotels also are good for the local economy, Higgins said, noting the properties all represent investments of more than $10 million each and will create jobs.
“Each of these new hotels should create about 20-30 jobs each,” he said. “There will also be spin-off jobs created from the new hotels. It’s going to create more business for our restaurants and it could lead to more restaurants locating in Columbus.”
Vice Mayor and Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin, whose ward will house the new hotels, said more rooms is a win-win situation for everyone.
“More hotels will create more money for the city and more jobs,” Gavin said. “I really think it will lead to us landing more restaurants and shops in time. Everyone wants a Cracker Barrel to come to Columbus. Getting more hotels will get us closer to getting something like a Cracker Barrel. But what everyone needs to realize is these things take time. We can’t just get a new restaurant overnight. But I think these new hotels are a step in the right direction.”
Jeff Clark was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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