17 Story Downtown Hotel Opens, Market briefs

In Houston, Neway Hospitality has opened the Holiday Inn Express and Staybridge Suites Houston Downtown, a 17-story dual brand hotel near Daikin Park.

In Located at 1319 Texas Ave. at Austin Street, the newly, built property brings a total of 275 hotel rooms to downtown Houston. The hotel is six blocks from the George R. Brown Convention Center, which is undergoing an expansion.

The opening occurs in advance of a huge tourist draw: FIFA World Cup soccer matches will take place at NRG Stadium in mid June and through July. (During the World Cup, the stadium will be temporarily renamed Houston Stadium before being rebranded as Reliant Stadium in August.)

In Part of the Ihg hospitality brand, the pet, friendly hotel offers a 144-room Holiday Inn Express and a 131-room Staybridge Suites with fully-equipped kitchens designed for longer stays. Amenities include complimentary breakfast, an outdoor pool on the fifth floor, fitness center, business center, dry cleaning and laundry service, and self-service laundry facilities.

Urban Street Market will occupy a first-floor corner convenience store. The garage offers EV charging.

The Holiday Inn Express and Staybridge Suites Houston Downtown is open for business.

Adding to downtown Houston’s public art scene, the new tower will display grand scale murals on two sides: one by Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra and another British muralist Curtis Hylton.

Neway Hospitality started work on the hotel in December 2023. The company is led by Ali Momin, who was also involved in the redevelopment of downtown’s historic Stowers Furniture into an Aloft Hotel.

The new hotel is a few blocks from bars and restaurants along Main Street Promenade, a walkable corridor of plazas and patios being developed by Downtown Houston+ and the City of Houston. The Texas Avenue location is close to game-day festivities for Houston Astros fans visiting Daikin Park.

The hotel opens as the demand for downtown hotel rooms grew 6.5% year over year in March, as stated by Houston First. Lifted by the CERAWeek energy conference, sports, and rodeo events, downtown hotel occupancy jumped to 81% in March.

Driven by demand for business and leisure travel, developers have been adding to the more than 30 hotels in downtown Houston. The dual-branded Home2 Suites by Hilton and Tru by Hilton Houston Downtown Convention Center, a development of PA Hospitality, opened at 1540 Leeland near Toyota Center last year.

The JW Marriott Houston Downtown, which open as a historic redevelopment of the century-old Samuel F. Carter Building at 806 Main Street in 2014, is expanding into the adjacent Battelstein’s Building. The renovations will add 56 hotels rooms, 10,000 SF of meeting space, and The Perch, a poolside rooftop restaurant and bar overlooking Main Street.

In Also on Main Street, Sltx Capital, a Sugar Land, based hotel firm led by Ali Momin, Navid Karedia and Shumair Panjwani, plans to convert the historic Scanlan Building at 405 Main Street into a hotel.