FAIRFIELD, NJ— Fifteen months after debuting its proprietary full-service brand, Prime Hospitality Inc. is prepping for its UFOC, with expectations Prime Hotels & Resorts will be franchised by year’s end. The move comes as the brand portfolio— stagnant at one corporate-owned property since PH&R launched in January 2003— is poised to increase to 15 with the conversion this April of a dozen Wyndham properties Prime will manage for Hospitality Properties Trust, and two Radissons Prime owns and operates in northern New Jersey that were slated to be re-flagged March 1. “We will have a Prime Hotels and Resorts brand, but I just don’t know if we’ll be ready to sell that. It [the UFOC]is high on our priority list to get it done, but I don’t necessarily know that we’ll be deeply involved in multiple applications for some time here,” said Jeff Williams, senior vp/franchise sales and development. “We would like to offer them [franchises]by the end of the year, yes,” he added. “None of the Prime Hotels and Resorts are franchised but the plan is that we might— we’re doing a UFOC that we might expand that brand through franchising,” said Maureen O’Hanlon, senior vp/marketing and sales. At presstime she indicated the final for the Uniform Franchise Offering Circular was due March 15. “We’re working on the final definition of the brand and what we want the UFOC to say. It’s being worked on, it’s not out there at this point, but the plans are to be able to franchise all three brands,” she said. Williams expected the majority would be conversions, but would be open to new construction projects. While there was no fixed cost per key as yet, he estimated $100,000 per key was feasible given the segment level. PH&Rs expected to open next month as a result of the HPT deal— which also includes a 15-year management contract for 24 AmeriSuites— are in: Chandler, North Phoenix and Phoenix Airport, AZ; San Diego and Sunnyvale, CA; Naperville, IL; Nashville, TN; Salt Lake City, UT; Bloomington, MN; Bothell and Seattle, WA; and Atlanta, GA. They represent 2,321 rooms. Efforts at building the brand will remain concentrated in the Northeast in the near term, according to Williams. O’Hanlon said the push for the UFOC comes from potential deals “that are full-service deals that we just couldn’t approach until now because clearly they wouldn’t fit into either [our]Wellesley or the AmeriSuites brand.” Putting Prime in the spotlight as its own lodging entity is dovetailing with recent efforts by the company to increase awareness that it also umbrellas Wellesley Inn & Suites and AmeriSuites. For example, signage and collateral are slowly being changed out on an as-needed basis to reflect a stronger corporate presence. Logos now read “Wellesley Inn & Suites by Prime” and “AmeriSuites by Prime.” The aggressive stance to get its name on product rather than just letting the brand names float is part of the “big picture” the owner/operator is painting for its future self, according to O’Hanlon. “The feeling is it’s time to start building the Prime [Hospitality] brand, which for most of the company’s existence has been in the background,” she said. At presstime there were 82 Wellesleys (9,633 rooms) and 148 AmeriSuites (18,511 rooms). “That’s a fairly good number of hotels to start getting the ‘by Prime’ brand out there simply as an introduction and tying those better-known proprietary brand names to the Prime name,” said O’Hanlon, adding that Prime owns and manages other brands, including Hilton, Radisson, Ramada and Sheraton. “The decision was made to try and fold those in, too, and build a brand based on the Prime name.” For instance, the two Radissons that are converting to the Prime brand are located on Route 46 East in Fairfield (206 rooms) and Route 3 West (151 suites) in Secaucus. The Fairfield property is becoming a Prime Hotel and Suites to leverage the rooms’ configurations of the former Radisson Hotel and Suites. Similarly, the Secaucus
