The Hotel at the University of Maryland will accept its first guests Friday — a bit behind schedule, but just a week after the busy NCAA football season started.
It’s opening will mark the first new, full-service hotel to open in the city in decades — since the College Park Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, which opened on campus in 1963.
Southern Management, based in Vienna, chose not to put a national brand on the $189 million hotel, something that raised eyebrows among some observers. But the company’s experience operating an independent hotel in an even less trafficked area, near the Arundel Mills Mall, gave it confidence that going independent was the right move, said general manager Jeff Makhlouf.
“When we opened up The Hotel at Arundel Preserve, people thought we were crazy to open an independent, boutique hotel. It’s not a destination. It’s not a prime market,” Makhlouf said. “But it turned out the market was hungry for such a product.”
The Hotel at Arundel…Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
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