by Quint Qualls
A ceremonial ground breaking was held on Tuesday for Spring Hill’s new Holiday Inn Express, which will feature 78 guest rooms and suites at its location off of Campbell Station Parkway.
According to Raj Idnani, one of two partners in RSB Parntership, the Holiday Inn Express franchisee, most of the guests of the new hotel are expected to be guests of members of the local community, in addition to business guests travelling to the area for companies like General Motors or Mars Petcare.
The Holiday Inn Express will be the city’s third hotel, in addition to a Best Western at the corner of Kedron Road and Main Street that is currently open and a Hampton Inn located at The Crossings shopping center that is slated for its grand opening this September.
Following Tuesday’s ceremony, the actual ground breaking will begin on the new Holiday Inn Express this week, Idnani said. He added that the buildout will likely go into fall 2017, with a grand opening slated for then.
“Our motto is going to be, ‘Send us your guest, and we will treat him like our guest,'” Idnani said. “We are not just a hotel where people stop by on their way to going to Florida. We are a family hotel. With the huge population of Spring Hill, the people who are relatives, who are here for family reunions or weddings or a commercial business – those people need a place to stay. So that’s what we will be catering to. When you have your guests, we will treat them like ours.”
The new Holiday Inn Express will be located at the corner of Campbell Station Parkway and Longford Drive. It will be about a 50,000-square-foot facility with 78 rooms across four stories. In addition, the hotel will include both small and medium-sized board rooms for meetings, a heated swimming pool, a fitness room, a convenience store at the front desk and hot breakfast service for guests.
Idnani said they will be building one of the newest styles of Holiday Inn Express, called “Formula Blue.” He said it is a new design concept that emphasizes a more contemporary interior design.
The City of Spring Hill is now looking at levying a maximum 3-percent tax on hotel rooms via an ordinance that is expected to come up for its first vote in July after the state legislation takes effect.
According to initial estimates, with an 80 percent occupancy of the 215 rooms at the Best Western, Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express and an average room rate of $75, a 3-percent privilege tax would generate $141,255. A 2-percent tax would result in $94,170 and a 1-percent tax would result in $47,085.
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