A combination of larger condo-style rooms and adaptable in-room and outdoor experiences has helped The Restoration Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, attract and retain guests through a challenging year.

The Restoration Hotel is a collection of five buildings the hotel’s owner, Cincinnati-based Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate, has acquired over the years. The owner purchased a cluster of 14 condos in 2009 intending to restore them and turn them into a hotel. The hotel grew over time, now taking up almost a full city block, as the owner acquired nearby properties, culminating with the fifth in 2015.

Four of the buildings, known as the residences, are historic properties. The fifth building houses the hotel’s studio and signature-style rooms, the pool, the rooftop restaurant, the lobby and the management offices.

The residences operate as hotel rooms, but they are condominium-style rooms to give guests the sense of living in downtown Charleston, general manager Chelsea Nightengale said. They have full gourmet kitchens, living areas separate from the bedrooms, washers and dryers and bathroom facilities. Between the residences and the main building, there are 12 different room types in the 54-room hotel.

“We really are able to kind of cater to any sort of traveler,” she said.

Even the hotel’s smallest room is 550 square feet and has a full-size refrigerator and kitchenette, Nightengale said. The rooms can accommodate small families getting out for the first time since the pandemic started as well as the business traveler who wants a little more room, she said.

The rooms have “all those little things that you might take for granted when you're traveling in normal times,” she said.

The property’s guest mix leans toward leisure given the style of its rooms, but it still has some corporate and group guests Monday through Thursday, Nightengale said. The property doesn’t have a traditional banquet-style meeting space, but ownership transformed one of the three-room residences into an event space. It still has two bedrooms on the second floor and a private rooftop terrace. The hotel can comfortably accommodate groups of 60 to 80 people.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, leisure continued to drive business at the hotel, but instead of flying in, primarily from the Northeast, guests now drive in from up to six hours away, she said. People still wanted to take a vacation when possible and saw the Charleston market as a desirable location.

“I'm hoping that as travelers start to travel and maybe if they don’t feel as comfortable traveling overseas, they are thinking of these really intimate cities like Charleston, like Savannah, the smaller cities in the South that still have that worldly experience and that worldly vibe but are a lot easier to get to,” she said.

The Restoration was on track last year for the busiest January, February and March in its history, leading up to what could have been “a stellar year,” but the coronavirus pandemic changed that trajectory, Nightengale said.

The hotel remained fully operational throughout 2020, making it the only property on the peninsula of Charleston to never close, a point of pride for the hotel, she said. That distinction allowed the staff to care for guests such as a group from England that couldn't return home amid the pandemic's travel restrictions, and others in the area for necessary personal and business travel.

The hotel’s owners felt it was important to keep as many staff members on payroll as possible, even before the federal Paycheck Protection Program came out, she said. While the hotel did furlough some employees, it is back up to 100% staffing levels. At the beginning of the pandemic, the staff was split into two teams when scheduling shifts so if someone tested positive for COVID-19, the entire staff wasn’t at risk.

The hotel also moved up its check-out time from noon to 11 a.m. to give housekeepers more time to clean the guest rooms, she said. That change will stay on after the pandemic as it allows housekeepers more time to ensure the rooms are perfect for guests.

The hotel’s restaurant, coffee shop and retail space are open as well. The hotel did close the spa, but the staff adjusted by providing in-room spa experiences, Nightengale said. Because of the popularity of the in-room spa offerings, the hotel will not reopen its spa after the pandemic ends.

Storage is always an issue in downtown historic Charleston, so the space that was the spa is now new offices and breakout meeting spaces for the hotel staff, she said. The in-room spa services keep that revenue stream alive and the staff have better back-of-house space.

When the pandemic began, the team at the hotel sat down to discuss how they were going to adapt to the new situation and provide guests with customized and curated experiences, Nightengale said.

The hotel’s guest curator department, which is similar to a personalized concierge, reaches out to guests a month before their stay to make their stays more convenient, such as stocking the in-room refrigerator with the guests’ preferred items so they don’t have to go shopping after they arrive.

One of the benefits of the hotel is all its guest rooms are large, allowing the hotel staff to provide intimate gatherings that are both luxurious and safe for guests, she said. One of the newer offerings the hotel has provided is a chef who provides an in-room culinary experience for up to six guests.

“We realized that people that were coming to Charleston still wanted that Charleston culinary experience but were afraid to go out, so we brought it to them,” she said.

The team took a similar approach with the rooftop movies the hotel would show that were open to the community, Nightengale said. Now guests can request a screen for an in-room movie experience that keeps movie nights special for their family.

The hotel has also offered one of its smaller breakout rooms to some of its corporate clients who want a bigger space for video meetings, she said. The corporate clients can get out of their office, comfortably spread out during the meetings and use the hotel’s audiovisual equipment.

For guests who feel stifled by having to stay indoors, The Restoration partnered with local businesses to provide small groups of guests with fun and safe experiences, Nightengale said. One option for guests is to go crabbing and bring back their catch to their rooms, where a chef will teach them about cooking crabs and prepare their meal.

The hotel also partnered with a local sailing charter in which small groups of guests can learn how to sail and receive certification for it, she said. The hotel provides them with transportation to and from the port as well as a picnic lunch.

“There's so many fun things to be able to do around Charleston, and it's still safe [for] small groups,” she said.

Though they created these experiences in response to the pandemic, Nightengale said they’ll continue to offer them to guests.

“We’ve operationally been able to execute it at such a high level, and our team is confident in what we’re delivering, and we really believe in what we’re doing,” she said. “I don’t think it’ll ever go away.”

The oldest building at The Restoration, originally a department store, dates back to the late 1800s. The building is called The Exchange because, at one point, the city’s first telegraph and telephone lines ran through the building.

One of the two residences is a Charleston-style row house, a type of home architecture that originated in Europe in the 17th century. The main floor is one of the hotel’s smaller event spaces with original hardwood floors, exposed brick and original windows.

Though the hotel comprises five separate buildings, an engineering team linked them together so they flow as one unit, Nightengale said.

Keeping the historical elements was important to the owners. The buildings still have many original architectural elements, and as work continues on the buildings, owners continue to source products originating in and around Charleston to make sure the hotel is historically accurate.

“Our name is The Restoration, so it’s constantly being restored, which is such a cool experience as a property,” she said.