When La Quinta announced its new Del Sol prototype last year, the company talked about how the new design maximized the revenue-producing square feet to create a more cost-efficient hotel. The company had started the process to create the prototype two and a half years ago but had to put it on the back burner. Now, with the opening of the first hotel based on this prototype, La Quinta has the proof of concept as well as a fresh yet distinctive look for new properties. At an event in College Station, Texas, the location of the new 89-room La Quinta Inn & Suites built using the Del Sol prototype, La Quinta executives, developers, and investors kicked the tires of the new-build property. “This design is part of our strategy to innovate for both our guests and hotel owners,” said Raj Trivedi, EVP and chief development officer of La Quinta Holdings.
“I really like the open feeling of the lobby and public spaces,” said the hotel’s developer, Ajay Patel. “And the centralized layout of the front desk, back office, housekeeping, and laundry services.” He, along with Mike Patel, runs AMR Hotels, an Irving, Texas-based management and development firm. “We’ve signed up five more new La Quinta hotels based on this prototype,” said Mike Patel, adding that the cost to build the 89-room hotel was $82,000 per key. While the look of the guestrooms has been updated—a tile entryway, for instance, and extra wall plugs located 4 feet off the ground—they remain the same size as previous generations of La Quintas.
The new prototype is intended for 90-plus room properties, though Trivedi said hoteliers looking to design a hotel with less than 85 rooms could use the brand’s urban prototype, adding that all the hotels in the company’s pipeline are either the urban or the Del Sol design. “The exterior facade and the room count are the main differences between the Del Sol and the Urban prototype. When we developed Del Sol, we didn’t want to completely redesign every space, so the guestrooms are the same in both,” said Murry Cathlina, La Quinta’s EVP of design and construction services. “We’ve sized the public area down a bit in the urban prototype due to the room count.”
All told, La Quinta has more than 865 hotels in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua in its owned and franchised portfolio, and a pipeline of 216 properties in the works. In 2014, La Quinta opened 45 hotels (an 8 percent increase year-over-year) and it expects to open 55 hotels in this year. Of those new openings, 45 are slated to be new-build Del Sol properties.
