EVERETT – The city’s newest motel is set to open next week, expanding the choices for travelers at a time when tourism officials are working to heat up the local hospitality industry.
The Holiday Inn Express Hotel &Suites just off I-5 on 128th Street SW will open a week from today, manager Erik Pede said.
“We have some finishing touches we need to put on, but it’s coming along great,” he said Thursday.
The 100-room, three-story motel includes a small meeting space and breakfast bar. The $6 million project was built by developer Dan Mitzel of Mount Vernon.
Even before the opening of the new motel, Snohomish County is not lacking for hotel rooms. Sandy Ward, executive director of the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau, said the market, with about 5,000 rooms, is considered overbuilt.
“But it feels like things are starting to pick up,” Ward said. “All in all, people are feeling more optimistic.”
About 67 percent of Snohomish County’s rooms were full in June, compared with less than 64 percent for the same month in 2003, according to Smith Travel Research’s latest survey.
For comparison, nearly 75 percent of King County’s hotel and motel rooms were full in June, as were 70 percent of Pierce County’s. Six of the 19 Washington counties surveyed by Smith Travel had lower occupancy rates than Snohomish County.
On the other hand, only six of those surveyed counties saw larger year-to-year improvements in occupancy rates than Snohomish County’s 5.3 percent jump. King County’s year-to-year improvement was 4.5 percent.
“There are others that are pretty far up and pretty far down, but we’re right in line,” Ward said.
For the first half of the year, Snohomish County saw a 7.4 percent improvement in demand for rooms, according to the survey.
Along with more full rooms, the average charge for a room in the county was up slightly from last year. Smith Travel said the average price for a room in June was $65.32, up about 90 cents.
July’s occupancy rates received a boost from last week’s National Softball Association’s Western World Series, which took place on ball fields across the county. The event drew an estimated 5,000 people, with three-fourths of the visiting teams coming from out of state, Ward said. Full rooms were the result, from Arlington to Redmond.
“We had people just begging for hotel rooms,” Ward said.
Julie Horrigan, director of sales and catering at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lynnwood, said that inn sold out six days in a row last week.
The tourism bureau hopes to attract more sports events of that size in the coming years. Officials also are talking with the organizers of several large conventions or meetings that could be held here in the coming year, Ward said.
In the meantime, the motels most likely to feel the effects of the Holiday Inn Express opening are the ones located nearby. The new motel is near the Everett Inn and across the freeway from the Quality Inn Hotel and Conference Center and the adjoining Comfort Inn and Suites. That complex was operated under the Holiday Inn brand until last year.
Some other motels have struggled this year. The Marina Village Inn on Everett’s waterfront, for example, closed at the end of May.
Despite that, the new Holiday Inn Express is not the only new hotel planned for the area. A new 104-room Hilton inn is scheduled to open in summer 2005 next to the new aviation museum at Paine Field.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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