| Source: NJBIZ
November 21, 2005
Polishing Up an Old Apple
A Former McIntosh Inn gets another chance under new ownership
By João-Pierre S. Ruth
THERE MAY BE, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, no second acts in American lives, but there are second acts aplenty in the hotel business. The McIntosh Inn in West Long Branch, which closed a year ago, will reopen next April with a new owner and a new name.
Hotels Unlimited, a privately held East Windsor-base hotel owner and operator, bought the shuttered property in late September for $4.5 million and plans to invest another $2 million for renovations before reopening it as a Holiday Inn Express. Hotels Unlimited believes a makeover and rebranding can make the property a logical choice for visitors to such local attractions as Monmouth University and nearby beaches.
The 116-room hotel, formerly part of the chain of McIntosh Inns based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, closed last November for lack of customers. Still, Hotels Unlimited thought the property had the potential to win back shore visitors looking for accommodations.
"The McIntosh Inn was under performing prior to closing in a strong, solid hotel market," says Carey Tajfel, vice president of Hotels Unlimited. "It was a matter of repositioning. That really has been the specialty of the company: buying distressed or mismanaged properties and repositioning an renovating them."
The renovation plan calls for the hotel's 116 rooms to be reconfigured into 87 rooms and suites. The new owners will add an exercise room, game room, indoor pool and a business center to the hotel. Tajfel says the new and improved operation will be geared toward attracting guests from the variety of people who visit the scenic area.
"There is the beach and the racetrack but it's also a strong corporate market," he says.
In addition to a wider range of amenities, Tajfel thinks the larger rooms will make the new version of the hotel more appealing than its failed predecessor. "The rooms that were there were undersized on half the building so we're converting them to two-room suites," says Tajfel. Each suite will have new features such as a sitting area and a wet bar. The average size of each suite will be 475 sq. ft. Tajfel did not have pricing for the rooms at press time, but other Holiday Inn Express sites cost about $100 per night for a room and about $150 per night for a suite.
Acquiring and revamping hotels have been a specialty for Hotels Unlimited since it was founded in 1979. The company, run by founder Henry Tajfel, his wife Julie, sons Doran and Carey, and son-in-law Steve Schwartz, owns eight hotel properties as franchisees of Days Inn, Ramada, Radisson and Holiday Inn. The company is also expanding to build and own hotels under the Hilton brand. Hotel Unlimited acquired the Holiday Inn in South Plainfield in October. The current properties are a mix of full-service hotels, which include restaurants and banquet facilities, and limited-service hotels like the Holiday Inn Express, which offer only limited food service.
The company began building its own properties in 2003 and has plans to build three new hotels. "Other than the Ramada of Toms River, which we built from scratch, everything else has been through acquiring exiting properties," says Tajfel.
Hotel Unlimited is developing a Hilton Garden Inn in Lakewood, a Hampton Inn in Freehold Ð both due to open in 2007 Ð and a Staybridge Suites Washington Township for 2008.
Smaller operators aren't responsible for much of the new-hotel building in the state, says Mark Giangiulio, general manager of the Grand Summit Hotel in Summit and president of the New Jersey Hotel & Lodging Association in Trenton. "Larger companies are the ones primarily doing the construction these days," he says.
He attributes the uptick in construction and renovation projects to a resurgence in travel. "When the industry starts to get better, people look to develop new properties," Giangiulio says.
Tajfel says the renovations to transform the old McIntosh Inn in to a new Holiday Inn Express are about to get underway. Meanwhile, his family's longtime strategy of buying and rebuilding may have a limited shelf life. Tajfel says the company is finding fewer opportunities to renovate and reopen hotels "I think they are far and few between," he says. "I don't think there is an abundance, at least not in the state of New Jersey."
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