Last week saw the return of STR and Hotel News Now’s Hotel Data Conference in Nashville, and for this author it really is a thick pencil line through three very odd years.
Life since August 2019 went on very normally in many walks of my life, but I regarded the annual gathering in Tennessee’s capital as a calendar surety, and for me not to have been there was quite strange.
Yes, in 2021 there was a hybrid conference, but it was not the same as a full-on meeting of the hotel industry and the sharing of data points and best practices.
The event returned to the Omni Nashville this year after its 2019 edition at the JW Marriott. The 2022 show was a success, and the host hotel was very crowded.
Coming over from England, I usually stay there for a couple of days before the event, and during the event itself, but this year with leisure demand skyrocketing, there was no room in the inn before the event started. Instead, I stayed at the Holiday Inn & Suites Downtown Nashville for the first 48 hours, which was excellent as it was only a handful of blocks from the original Hattie B’s Hot Chicken restaurant, which is a must.
Hattie B’s is now a chain. It has four spots in Nashville itself — and I studiously avoided the new one in the thick of Broadway and its musical honkytonks — and it is worrying on some level that it has a branch in Las Vegas, now.
The downtown Nashville branch seems to have lifted some pressure off the original Midtown spot, where one only waits for 15 minutes now, not an hour.
Clubs, Hubs and Tubb
At the only honkytonk I truly enjoy, Layla’s, I chatted with Matt and Angela from Laverne, Oklahoma, which is in that state’s Panhandle region.
Matt works in oil, and Angela told me the town of 1,400 was famous for being the hometown of a former Miss America winner, Jane Jayroe, currently the secretary for tourism for the state of Oklahoma. We started a conversation about how that contest might have changed for the best — Angela seemed to think so; I have no idea — to encourage young women to be empowered, to realize any dream was possible and to be more political.
I know the Oklahoma Panhandle sits above the portion of Texas that contains Lubbock, the hometown of musician Buddy Holly. I did not realize Laverne also is the hometown of songwriter Jimmy Webb, whose hits include “Wichita Linesman,” which I would rank among the finest of American tunes, and “Galveston;” both of these songs were made famous in renditions by Glen Campbell.
Back at the hotel, I realized, too, the Holiday Inn had a unique view from its breakfast room, for what I was looking at was the pre-COVID-19 view from the Omni but with six to a dozen new hotels now placed in that view.
Both hotels have one side of their buildings on Fourth Avenue South.
Three years ago, I remember construction vehicles and orange-costumed workers walking along Fourth Avenue South in the same place I now was eating breakfast but five floors up.
A couple of Nashville residents originally from Indiana who I chatted with waiting for my plane from Chicago said rents in Nashville are easily now above $2,000 per month for its cooler neighborhoods, which compare favorably, or unfavorably, with London and New York City.
There are more cranes there than there were in 2019, and the Virgin hotel — all cranes in 2019 — has opened.
The Elliston Place Soda Shop, which opened in 1939, moved next door to a larger space in 2020. The owners have done a great job recreating the style and feel of the original, but, of course, it is not the original.
The original now sells some form of legal cannabis derivative.
Despite the cranes, much in Nashville has closed. I saw a tremendous number of empty shops and restaurants, even on the side streets that border the main Broadway drag between the Bridgestone Arena and the Cumberland River.
The biggest loss might be the Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Broadway.
I did a double take when I saw it was shut, with boards covering the windows.
I asked an official guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame — where the Hotel Data Conference hosted its opening reception — what happened to the music store, and she was crying when she told me she thought its lease was up and the decision was made not to renew it.
This year, the store would have celebrated its 75th anniversary. It was where Loretta Lynn, still recording at the age of 90, played some of her first performances.
Apparently, a local honkytonk owner bought the building and business, so it might see a rebirth.
All cities have ebbs and flows, new businesses and closed businesses, but some of these sights underlined to me how time is ruthless, especially when a pandemic plays into the equation.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.