Springfield among first cities slated to get new hotel brand focused on millennials

Springfield is among the first eight cities slated to get a new boutique hotel brand developed by Best Western International.

Elliott Lodging plans to open a 90-room Vib hotel — the name is short for “vibrant” — on property near the intersection of Sunshine Street and Glenstone Avenue. The project will be geared to young professionals. Smaller rooms. More social space. Ditch the free breakfast buffet. Stock the fitness center.

“This is dubbed as a millennial project,” Gordon Elliott, president and CEO of Elliott Lodging, told the News-Leader Tuesday.

Elliott said he is on a Best Western design advisory committee, which made him aware of the development of the new brand, and he approached Best Western about a Springfield location.

Earlier this year, Best Western announced deals for Vib hotels in Chicago, Miami and Seoul, South Korea. But Springfield was accepted for the second round of five additional locations, which were formally announced this week. The other locations are Los Angeles, Miami (again), Staten Island and Little Rock. None of the locations have opened yet.

Best Western said this week that it is actively negotiating deals for additional locations in cities including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, New Orleans, Scottsdale and San Diego.

“Vib is really gaining traction because it is the only boutique concept designed for the upper midscale hotel segment and fills a niche that developers and customers want,” Ron Pohl, Best Western’s senior vice president of brand management, said in a news release.

According to its website, Elliott Lodging manages 17 hotels across seven brands in the region, including four Best Western locations. The Vib hotel is slated to be built at 1845 E. Sunshine St.; a San Francisco Oven restaurant that used to be at the location has been torn down. Elliott is in the process of buying back the property; he previously sold it to a bank, which later decided not to build a branch at the location.

Elliott said rooms at the hotel will likely average about $100, which is $20 to $25 more than someone might spend to stay in a nearby Best Western.

Rooms at Vib will be smaller and designed for efficiency — no closet, for example, and a shower instead of a bathtub — because millennials are more interested in common social areas, Elliott said. There won’t be a pool, but there will be an expectation that guests are bringing electronic devices, and the fitness center will be a focus.

“They want to work out,” Elliott said of young professionals. “For food, they want healthy food; they don’t want the free buffet, necessarily.”

While the hotel is slated to be built next door to Lamplighter Inn & Suites, Elliott said there really isn’t that much lodging in the general area, given the traffic the intersection sees.

Best Western said the announced locations are all slated to open by the end of 2016. Elliott said he is figuring on six months to get through the approval stages for the project — both the local and corporate level — and a year after that until the project is completed.