Pet massages and pillow menus: Nashville's hotels are in an amenity arms race Pet massages, in-room pillow menus, rooftop pools and recording studios are some of the upscale amenities offered at Nashville hotels

Lizzy Alfs | The Tennessean

Forget the free WiFi and coffee in the lobby.

In the increasingly crowded lodging market, Nashville hotels are trying to lure guests with lavish amenities such as chef-prepared meals for your dog, state-of-the-art recording studios and in-room pillow menus.

These high-end amenities are becoming the new normal as thousands of rooms flood the Nashville market. Rooftop pools and trendy restaurants with well-known chefs at the helm are practically a prerequisite at new downtown hotels.

Since 2013, nearly 5,000 new hotel rooms have come online in Davidson County, and many of those have been high-end and boutique offerings near downtown, such as The Westin, Omni and Thompson. Another 6,000 rooms are under construction, and 5,800 rooms are in planning stages, per data from the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp.

More: As Nashville tourism booms, is Music City Center collecting more tax revenue than it needs?

And there's not just competition amongst the hotels; Nashville's lodging industry is jam-packed with Airbnbs, bed and breakfasts, boutique properties and traditional hotels.

Upscale hotels include novel amenities Upscale hotels, such as Hutton Hotel, are including novel amenities for their guest, such as songwriting rooms

As a lodging market booms, it’s common to see “amenity creep,” where hotels add services to attract guests instead of lowering rates to fight off competition, said Greg Hanis, a hotel industry analyst with Hospitality Marketers.

“The last thing the hotel wants to do is cut rates. If they can add amenities to their services, that will be the first thing they will do,” Hanis said. “The other thing they will do is start cutting some of the ancillary services; maybe they’ll cut valet parking rates or the parking charges they put onto guests.”

As Nashville hotel rates have soared in recent years, so too have the upscale services offered to guests. Hotels are wielding these amenities as a key marketing tool.

Want to pamper your pet with salmon risotto or turkey fried rice prepared by the hotel’s kitchen staff? Stay at the pet-friendly Bobby Hotel. Want to ride around Nashville on European-inspired street-cruiser bicycles? The Kimpton Aertson Hotel allows guests to use their custom-designed bikes for free. Or choose between goose-down, memory foam, buckwheat or latex foam pillows from The Hermitage Hotel’s in-room pillow menu.

Other unique amenities you'll find in the Nashville hotel market include intimate concert venues just steps away from guest rooms, locally made snacks and cocktail mixes in the mini bar as well as rooftop bars with sweeping views of downtown.

“When you’re at the luxury end, at the top of your market, the expectation is that year-after-year you continue to evolve, you continue to add amenities and experiences and increase your service levels. It’s almost a cost of being at the level that you are,” said Dee Patel, general manager of The Hermitage Hotel, a historic downtown property known for its high-end amenities such as 24-hour concierge, nightly turndown, on-call shoeshine service, on-site dry-cleaning, pet massages and babysitting/nanny services.

Patel said the hotel has added a slew of amenities in the 15 years since it was renovated under new ownership and those features first undergo extensive testing. For instance, the hotel embedded 20-inch TVs into the bathroom mirrors in guest rooms, but first had to make sure the mirrors would defog properly, and hotel staff tested 20 different shower heads before choosing one.

“We filled up a bucket and tested it to time and thought, which one is the most suitable? Some of those very, very basic things can be taken for granted if not really thought through, so we do spend a lot of time,” Patel said.

The hotel also attracts guests with its on-site high-end restaurant Capitol Grille, which sources produce and beef from its own farm, and the Oak Bar, known for its 130-bottle Bourbon Library.

The Hermitage was a trendsetter in the hotel fine dining space, but now a long list of Nashville hotels are making upscale restaurants their anchor tenant. The Thompson hotel in the Gulch partnered with New Orleans celebrity chef John Besh to open three food and beverage concepts, which are now operated by QED Hospitality; the new Bobby Hotel added four dining concepts downtown; and Charleston favorite Oak Steakhouse opened adjacent to The Westin in SoBro.

Hanis said food sales are typically the lowest profit area for a hotel, behind the bar and rooms. He said it makes financial sense for a hotel to lease space to a restaurant operator so the hotel doesn’t have to worry about operation costs like labor and equipment.

“It’s almost like a two-edged sword. Sometimes you need to add the amenities, but it costs a lot of money to operate them, so if you can find a way to outsource it … and then you market it as an amenity to your guest, that becomes a win-win situation,” Hanis said.

Hutton Hotel general manager Jonathan Bartlett said hotel guests today are seeking experiential amenities. The hotel recently underwent a renovation to overhaul its guest rooms, added two fully functioning writing/recording studios and opened a music venue called Analog.

A full-time technical engineer manages the studios, which can be rented on an hourly, daily or weekly basis. Bartlett said Maren Morris and Zedd worked on their hit song “The Middle” in one of the studios.

“I think, especially in this environment we’re in with hotels today, guests want experiences. To be able to provide value-added experiences for guests, that, to me, is the direction that a lot of hotels are going in,” Bartlett said.

Reach Lizzy Alfs at lalfs@tennessean.com or 615-726-5948 and on Twitter @lizzyalfs.