We at Hotel News Now and our parent company STR sincerely thank all the attendees for making the 2018 edition of the Hotel Data Conference in Nashville such a huge success.
We hope that it was a huge success, and feel like it was, but comments and feedback from the almost 700 attendees will determine that.
It was the conference’s 10th anniversary, and the fourth and last year it was held at the Omni Nashville Hotel.
I was just getting used to walking around the hotel on auto-pilot, knowing where the Broadway and Cumberland meeting rooms are without first walking several hundred feet or more in the wrong direction.
I have become rather fond of the Omni Nashville.
The view keeps changing. Two examples of change were right outside my guestroom window, with a clear space currently being levelled to await the first brick of the upcoming Joseph Hotel and, immediately adjacent, Marriott International’s first triple-branded asset—with an AC Hotels by Marriott, a Residence Inn by Marriott and a SpringHill Suites by Marriott—well on its way to completion. Nashville remains on rocket-fueled hotel trajectory.
HDC has grown in step with Nashville.
Inside the Omni is the cool, friendly Bongo Java coffee shop, which might be a little overpriced but has a record player spinning vinyl, a friendly staff and on Saturdays a live radio show where the only subject is local sports.
The hotel is connected to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum and Hatch Show Print, the legendary music-poster printing works that gives tours and still produces iconic concert and event paraphernalia.
Hatch Show Print has had several homes in Nashville—although I was surprised to learn it originally debuted in Prescott, Wisconsin—including on Broadway and close to the Ryman Auditorium. It was bought by the CMHF&M and moved to the Omni in October 2013, less than two years before HDC did.
I will miss being so focused on HDC in the Omni. I came down to the ground floor on Friday afternoon and realized our conference is not the be-all and end-all, as the lobby was choc-a-bloc with bachelorette parties checking in.
By the time the HDC crew took its celebratory group photo at the hotel’s Barlines bar, these groups were already whizzing up and down 5th Avenue South on their way to the hedonistic delights of Broadway.
The superb service of the Barlines staff was equally fast, despite our large group. Cheers!
In 2019, HDC will open at the JW Marriott Nashville, which is one of those hotels I have watched rising upward during my six years of being involved in HDC. It opened on the corner of 8th Avenue South and Demonbreun Street in July, and I look forward to becoming fond of it, too.
So goodbye Omni Nashville. It is the hotel I have stayed at the most in the world. It might be a curious habit, but I generally always choose a new place to stay when I am in the same city.
To that point, I can name the other hotels I have stayed in more than once—the Hotel Hermitage Monte-Carlo and The Langham, London. Yes, not bad choices, I admit, but at four stays, most likely no one will usurp the Omni Nashville.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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