ORLANDO— Hilton Hotels Corp. recently celebrated the opening of its milestone 100th Hilton Garden Inn here. The eight-story hotel, known as the Hilton Garden Inn Orlando at Sea World International Center, represents a milestone for the brand in that in addition to being its 100th hotel, it is also the first to feature a resort-like adaptation of the Garden Inn prototype. “The beautiful thing about the Garden Inn product is that we are able to adapt the size and scope of the building to fit the market. The 100th property is adjacent to Sea World’s parking lot, and we saw this as an incredible opportunity to do a larger hotel,” said Mark Nogel, senior director of marketing for Hilton’s Garden Inn brand. The 233-room Orlando hotel was developed by Hilton’s long-term development partner— Hardin Capital— and is managed by Sage Hospitality. Orlando South Hotel Partners, LLC, an affiliate of Hardin Capital, owns the newly constructed hotel. “We’ve been involved with Hilton Garden Inn since the inception of the brand. We began working with Hilton to refine the prototype for the Garden Inn product, which is meant to compete directly with Courtyard by Marriott,” said Eric Brooks, president, Hardin Capital. “The Orlando property is the 10th Garden Inn we’ve developed, so we’ve been involved with 10% of the brand’s portfolio and plan to do many more. We came up with the prototype for this particular property, and, in fact, the model room for the regular HGI prototype is located in our offices in Atlanta,” Brooks added. With approximately 100 more guestrooms than the prototypical Garden Inn, the Orlando property represents the brand’s first “leisure destination location” property. The brand, which had previously focused mainly on suburban, corporate-campus-like locales, also recently opened its first urban hotel in Chicago— both representing projects developed by Hardin Capital. Although Hilton is not currently negotiating the development of any additional “leisure destination location” properties, additional urban hotels will be coming online in the near future, according to Brooks. “Going forward, we are looking at developing more urban Garden Inn products using the prototype we developed for the 357-room Chicago hotel. We are scouting several sites as we speak, and hope to make some announcements soon,” said Brooks. As for development, Hilton executives confirmed that the Garden Inn portfolio will continue growing at a rapid clip, with the 200th property envisioned in the near future. “We have 103 Garden Inns open as of now, and 20 to 25 more are set to open by year-end. We currently have 125 properties in the pipeline, and we’re hoping that number 200 for the brand will be developed by Hardin,” said Adrian Kurre, senior vp/brand management, Hilton Garden Inns. The 100th Hilton Garden Inn features an expanded pavilion area to cater to the leisure and family-oriented environment found in Orlando. Although the new Garden Inn is also well-equipped to serve the business traveler, and features the standard Garden amenities such as a 24-hour business center, an over-sized desk, ergonomic chair, dual phone lines and dataport, adjustments have been made in accordance with the “leisure destination location concept.” “For the Orlando HGI, we increased the size of the pavilion because in a resort setting, you have a much higher double occupancy in the hotel and need additional seating at the restaurant, and need to cater more adequately to families,” said Brooks. Accordingly, the Orlando HGI features an oversized pool; a children’s room with scaled-down furniture, toys and games; an enlarged food and beverage venue with additional seating to accommodate families; and a 25-gallon, salt-water aquarium in the lobby, replacing the typical HGI fireplace. On the day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Hilton Garden Inn Orlando ran at 100% occupancy, and Kurre and Nogel expect the property to hits its yield target within six to nine month
