Wyndham Garden replaces Boise Hotel

The Boise Hotel starts its new life July 7 as the Wyndham Garden Boise Airport Hotel.

The white-and-green Wyndham Garden sign went up July 6 and the Wyndham identity became official July 7, said Jonathan Wray, director of sales.

Wyndham is the first of a three-part reinvention of the former three-building, 265-room Holiday Inn property at 3300 S. Vista Ave., just across Interstate 84 from Boise Airport.

As the Holiday Inn until 2011, the property had the second largest hotel room count in the Treasure Valley. But Salt Lake City-based Western Hospitality Group, the owners of Boise Hotel since September 2014, are bringing a one-property-fits-all philosophy with three different hotel brands.

Wyndham Garden, with 116 rooms, fills only the main building that includes the restaurant and 17,000-square-foot conference center.

Western Hospitality in the next few months intends to open a lower-budget Americas Best Value Inn with about 75 rooms in the second building along Sunrise Rim Road. The 70-room third building, which has been shuttered since 2008, will become Idaho’s first, as of now, Studio 6 Extended Stay, likely sometime next year, said Nick Bhati, Western Hospitality general manager in Boise.

Wyndham Garden will have an average daily rate of $105, ranging from $90 to $119. Americas Best Value will have lower rates and Studio 6 still lower rates. The idea was to fit all budget-conscious travelers.

“We decided when somebody drives into the parking lot, we don’t want them to go to any other hotel,” Bhati said.

Bhati plans to heavily market the Wyndham Garden as a conference center for corporate and government clients. He said the prior ownership was passive about marketing the property, but Wyndham staff will be in town soon to knock on corporate doors to introduce the first Wyndham hotel in the Pacific Northwest.

The Idaho Tax Commission needs no introductions. Education Director Jan Barnard has staged winter and summer property tax education courses for county assessors and their staff at the Boise Hotel for years.

“I was watching the upgrades,” Barnard said. “They are making it so much nicer. They are upgrading the rooms and the conference rooms.”

The conference rooms won’t be upgraded until next year, but Barnard’s 300 to 500 summer students will have upgraded rooms to stay in with granite top desks, safe, refrigerator, microwave and flat-screen TV. The hotel had 1990s box televisions until the last few months. Barnard’s students come from upward of 30 of Idaho’s 44 counties and a few other states.

“I think they will be delighted,” Barnard said.

Wray expects business travelers will be especially delighted with the CubieTime alarm clock, which also has two USB ports and two three-prong sockets and measures only 4.5 inches square.

“We believe we have the most friendly business alarm clock out there,” Wray said.

Western Hospitality Group put in a winning $2.95 million bid at a Sept. 2 bank auction, took ownership Oct. 21, landed the Wyndham brand, and started clearing out the first set of 30 rooms for renovation on Nov. 26.

Western Hospitality has four partners who, individually and as a group, own more than 35 hotels, but this Wyndham Garden is the company’s first full-service hotel with restaurant, bar and conference center.

The Boise Hotel intrigued the partners because of its large number of rooms, its conference center, its location near the airport, and Boise’s strength as a corporate and government center. Yet the Boise Hotel barely had 50 percent occupancy.

“Nobody had seen the potential,” Bhati said. “It was kind of rundown. Boise really is a good market and this is right across the freeway from the airport.”

The Western Hospitality owners are Tom Patel and Mike Chaudhari. They later brought Rocky Patel and Dharmesh Ahir into the ownership.