College Campus Hotels for the 21st Century

By Paul Breslin CHA, CHE, ISHC on December 12, 2016

College Campus Hotels for the 21st Century 1 1

Paul Breslin, Managing Director, and Oliver Tang, Analyst, at Horwath HTL in Atlanta, USA, have written their latest report for Hotel Executive, focusing on College Campus Hotels.

Extract of our latest Industry Report: College Campus Hotels for the 21st Century

Generally, any hotel that uses a nearby educational institution as the primary demand generator can be considered a campus hotel; however, the scope of this article focuses on hotels that are directly affiliated with an educational institution, often a college or university.For each campus hotel project, developers should fully understand the school’s vision to create a property that not only meets the design requirements and educational purposes, but is also economically sustainable. On the other hand, operators should have appropriate revenue management practice, leverage school’s internal resources, and manage student employees with extra emphasis on scheduling and training.
The concept of campus hotels is not a new one. In 1923, the American Hotel Association proposed a “practice hotel” for Cornell’s then newly-established hospitality program. For many years, because there are only a limited number of this kind of properties, there has not been significant study on this topic. However, in recent years, the industry has seen increasingly more joint ventures or other types of partnerships between educational institutions and developers all around the country. There are several reasons that contributed to this trend:
The boutique lifestyle hotel movement in the hospitality industry requires many older campus hotels to be renovated or upgraded.
More and more universities and colleges started offering or expanding their hospitality programs, and having a hotel can add practical value to these programs.

Paul Breslin

About the author

Paul Breslin CHA, CHE, ISHC pbreslin@horwathhtl.com