For about three years, it was nearly impossible to book a hotel room in Minot, says Shane Hayes of PLC Inc., the management company overseeing the La Quinta. When a room was available, he says, the price was typically $200 a night. (Today, room rates in Minot range from under $100 to almost $200.) “You see the numbers out there and you want to be here,” Hayes says. “We’re not the only ones who thought that.” Since the Minot La Quinta opened in March 2012, he says, the community has added about 10 more hotels, including economy properties, midscale and upper-midscale hotels, and extended-stay lodgings. A Hilton Garden Inn with a convention center is currently in the early planning stages.
And the growth isn’t confined to the extended-stay brands either. Sure, some hotels in Minot follow the extended-stay model in their oil worker accommodations, but neither the La Quinta nor the Hampton Inn and Suites that recently opened near the Minot Airport are traditional extended-stay brands. The La Quinta offers both regular and extended-stay amenities, Zafra says, and sees both types of travelers. The Hampton Inn isn’t built as an extended-stay hotel, though it has suites with microwaves, refrigerators, and wet bars.
For a typical hotel, Hayes says, the ramp-up period is about three years. “Within three weeks [in Minot], we were basically running on 90 percent occupancy,” he says. “Almost for a full year it was like that.” Hayes’ only other experience with such a rapid ramp-up was in Dickinson, N.D., where a La Quinta opened within a week of the Minot property. “We knew what the market was, so we were anticipating it,” he says. “But it’s pretty amazing to see those types of numbers.”
After a banner year in 2012, Hayes says, occupancy at the Minot La Quinta Inn and Suites is steadying. That’s on par with the local market as a whole, he adds, which is down about 30 to 40 percent from last year. “The property is still doing well,” Hayes says. “It’s just not what we’d seen from the start.” Much of the region’s oil activity moves to Texas and Oklahoma in the winter, he says. While about 80 percent of the hotel’s guests last year were corporate travelers, mostly related to the oil boom, Zafra says the number was closer to 50 percent in the first quarter of 2013.
