by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
When Jacksonville’s 966-room hotel on the St. Johns River changed brands from Adams Mark to the Hyatt around three years ago, virtually everything in the hotel was renovated. About all that was left of the previous decor was the marble floor in the lobby.
The improvement plan hasn’t really slowed down. The total investment in the hotel since Hyatt took over just passed the $25 million mark, said General Manager Dan King.
“When Hyatt took over the property, we renovated every guest room and the lobby,” said King. “Since then we’ve made even more major improvements. “We’ve completely renovated our fitness center, which is now available to our guests 24 hours a day. We replaced 110,000 square feet of carpet and installed new wall coverings in our meeting spaces at a cost of $1.25 million.”
Other improvements include new restrooms in the lobby and meeting areas, a process King said would take two years to complete.
The 17th floor of the hotel is the Concierge Level and Regency Club, a private lounge and business center, which just received a $150,000 makeover that will soon include computer workstations. Televisions in the guest rooms on the floor are also scheduled to be upgraded to plasma screens.
The areas in the lobby that used to contain banks of pay telephones are being converted into cybercafes with Internet access.
“These days almost everyone has a laptop and a cell phone,” said King. “We found our guests weren’t using the pay phones anymore, so we’re converting the spaces into something they will use.”
Spending $25 million in three years on renovations is part of Hyatt’s plan to maintain a level of service and amenities for business and leisure travelers, he added.
While the Jacksonville Hyatt isn’t the largest hotel flying the Hyatt flag – that distinction goes to the 2,019-room Hyatt Regency Chicago – the 966-room, 33-meeting-room Jacksonville location ranks in the top 15 in number of guest rooms and top 10 among Hyatt hotels with meeting space.
Renovations are a continuing process and part of the hotel’s annual plan and budget.
“A certain percentage of our revenue each year is held over for maintenance and renovation,” said King. “Every facility Hyatt owns or manages has a schedule based on life expectancy.
“For instance, every seven years, we do a soft-goods renovation in the guest rooms. After a property gets to be 15 or 20 years old, we look at replacing large equipment like in the laundry and boilers.”
New plasma screen televisions have been installed behind the front desk so guests can catch up on cable news services while they check in, or they can check themselves in or out with the self-service kiosks. Another new addition is a display connected directly to Jacksonville International Airport that provides the latest schedule data on every flight.
The first of 4,000 new banquet chairs arrived last week and will be used by the more than 500,000 people who attend meetings or stay overnight.
“This hotel has been a great success for us,” said King.
Jacksonville’s Hyatt is part of Chartres Lodging Group LLC’s portfolio of 41 properties either owned, managed or both worldwide. King said acquisition of two of the latest additions, a Hyatt Convention Center Hotel in San Antonio, Texas and the riverfront Hyatt Regency in St. Louis was at least partly inspired by the three-year track record of the Hyatt.
“The success we have had here made those decisions easy to make,” said King.
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