The modern traveler is looking for more experiences in their stays, and that can mean booking a room in a century-old hotel that transports visitors to a different era.
"Every city in the United States has some historic hotels. Those historic hotels have things that you're not going to see in a modern environment," Paul Eckert, executive vice president of operations and business intelligence at Davidson Hospitality, which manages 11 properties in its portfolio that are nearly or over a century old, said on a recent episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast.
Eckert said he feels that travelers are drawn to these types of stays more than previous generations, and he gave his father as an example. Eckert's father valued consistency when he traveled — especially for work. He wanted every room to feel the same no matter what city he was in.
"I would say that the travelers now are much more adventurous," he explained, adding that guests do want consistency in quality but don't want to wake up not knowing what city they are in based on the room's cookie-cutter interior. "I think the interest in historic hotels has actually been growing because the unique nature of them and the fact that they have a heritage that a brand-new -build hotel can never have."
Guests are increasingly drawn to this experience because the decisions they are making — where they stay, where they dine, what music they listen too — are all lifestyle-defining characteristics of who you are as a person, Eckert said.
Providing this guest experience includes maintaining and running a 100-year-old property, which comes with its own nuances on both the hotel's ownership and management sides. And Davidson Hospitality is very familiar with the added challenges. Its portfolio includes Michigan's Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, built in 1887, and Spokane, Washington's The Louie, A Davenport Hotel, Autograph Collection, built in 1890.
"There's a lot more of an investment in maintaining a historic hotel. And there's also some regulatory oversight from local community and also from national," Eckert explained.
This requires Davidson to work with local organizations intimately — with most new materials needing to be approved before installation.
"If your property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, there's governance to what you can and can't do with the facade or exterior of a building," he said.
Eckert said it comes down to consistent communication. He has calls with ownership weekly, and every year they update their rolling five-year plan.
"A brand-new hotel you're going to renovate every seven years. A historic hotel you're going to be repairing and maintaining a lot of things every year, regardless of if you want to or not," Eckert said. "It's a requirement of the building in order to maintain it and keep it pristine and deliver it to the guests the correct way."
For more from the interview with Davidson's Paul Eckert, listen to the podcast embedded above.