Dive Brief:
- RLJ Lodging Trust announced Thursday that, after a comprehensive renovation next year, its boutique 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Nashville will join the Tapestry Collection by Hilton.
- RLJ acquired the Nashville hotel last year for $59 million. According to RLJ President and CEO Leslie Hale, the hotel is located within one of the “most dynamic markets in the country,” and its conversion to the lifestyle Hilton brand “will help it realize its true potential.”
- The hotel is the third conversion project by RLJ this year, following others in New Orleans and Houston, and is part of RLJ’s growth strategy to invest in its owned assets, Hale said. The rebrand comes as domestic leisure travel demand holds strong, with lifestyle and boutique hotels, particularly in urban markets, showing good performance.
Dive Insight:
The 21c Museum Hotel currently encompasses 124 rooms and features an eighth-floor terrace, 8,000 square feet of meeting and event space and art exhibition space. In 2017, the Gray & Dudley Building retail and wholesale hardware operations space was converted into the boutique hotel. Now, it will be renovated again, but additional project details are undisclosed.
The project follows three hotel conversions RLJ completed last year. Going into 2023, the company was focused on continuing investing in conversion, particularly for its hotels in urban leisure markets.
“The ongoing recovery in Urban leisure gives us confidence that Urban markets will continue to outperform the industry on a relative basis this year, which will benefit our Urban-centric portfolio,” Hale said in the company’s Q4 2022 earnings report.
Several U.S. urban markets saw strong performance in the first half of 2023, and across the board, leisure travel demand remains strong, Hale and other hotel industry leaders shared during a panel discussion at The Hospitality Show in Las Vegas last month.
Lifestyle and boutique hotels have also seen strong performance of late, with increased ADR and RevPAR.
Hilton opened its first lifestyle hotel in the urban leisure market of San Francisco in May.
