The 189-room Hyatt Place Pasadena held a ribbon-cutting on December 20, offering nearly 3,000 square feet of meeting space. According to Bernadette Soriano, General Manager, the hotel is an elevated Hyatt Place that will be able to hold its own with luxury hotels in the area.
“I think this is very unique. I would be confident to say that this will be one of the best Hyatt Places in the Hyatt portfolio,” Soriano told USAE. “I think itwas very well-designed and thought-out, and the owner did not spare any expense in terms of artwork in the building. Everything is a lot larger than your typical Hyatt Place. We have three meeting rooms from 870 square feet to about 1,100 square feet, so everything is kind of multiplied size-wise but also in the design aspect.”
Soriano said the lobby features a large art piece, and custom furniture, carpets, wallpapers and artworks – some of it featuring designs evocative of Pasadena like roses or the Colorado Bridge – are featured throughout the hotel. An art wall also displays local artwork that will rotate out every six months and is sourced through a partnership with a local gallery.
“The hotel is select-service, but people will look at it as more of an upscale hotel that could easily compete with the full-service hotels in the area being the fact that we have food and beverage offerings on-site,” Soriano said. We have meeting facilities. Our guest rooms are very spacious.”
Soriano said she anticipates about 20 percent of the hotel’s occupancy to come from events at the convention center, with corporate and leisure travel rounding out the difference.
The first major event is the Rose Parade, and Soriano said the hotel’s opening was timed to take advantage of the New Year celebrations.
“It’s not just to capture the holiday crowd, but the main point was for us to capture the Rose Bowl [and] Rose Parade attendees,” Soriano said. “And these people that stay in the hotel will be our future repeat customers as well especially if they’re strongly tied to the city of Pasadena or strongly tied to the Tournament of Roses or the companies that participate in the parade every year, so we expect long-term relationships with them.”
Soriano said much of the hotel’s marketing will be handled through Hyatt corporate, but the hotel has also built “strong relationships” with the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, the Pasadena CVB, and local venues and businesses like the nearby Paseo mall to cross-promote the hotel and their services.
“We are also going to work with the area’s hotels in capturing more convention business for the city of Pasadena,” Soriano said.
Jeanne O’Grady Goldschmidt, Executive Director of the Pasadena CVB, told USAE the Hyatt Place brings Pasadena up to nearly 2,700 rooms within walking distance of the convention center, which she said has 130,000 square feet of space.
“We’re very excited,” Goldschmidt said. “We’ve been watching this come up from the ground across from the convention center. It’s a beautiful property.” Goldschmidt said the area’s existing hotels have done renovations as well, giving Pasadena’s convention-goers plenty of hotel options.
“We’re excited that all of our hotels have stepped up,” Goldschmidt said, adding, “Adding this hotel in Pasadena just elevates our game here.”
Link to story: https://usae.magtitan.com/magazine/issues/1-7-2019-pcma/just-in-time-for-rose-parade-189-room-hyatt-place-opens-in-pasadena
