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Interstate Hotels Renames the Financially Troubled The Creeks
at Beechwood Hotel & Conference Center to
Doral Tesoro Hotel & Golf Club
.
Investing $2 million in Makeover of Greg Norman Designed Golf Course to Make it Easier
By Bill Bowen, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

Mar. 25, 2003 -- FORT WORTH, Texas -- The financially troubled Beechwood conference hotel and golf course is revamping its marketing and management strategy again, armed this time with a new name and Texas Motor Speedway alliance. 

Beechwood has temporarily closed its notoriously difficult golf course, the first in the Metroplex designed by Greg Norman, and started a $2 million makeover designed to make the level of play easier for weekend duffers. The job is set to be completed in October. 

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, which took over management of the 286-room hotel and resort late last year, has renamed it the Doral Tesoro Hotel & Golf Club. It is the sixth hotel with the Doral brand. 

Under the agreement with the neighboring Texas Motor Speedway, the Doral Tesoro is also now the official hotel for the speedway, and a joint marketing operation that will "double the sales staffs" of both operations, speedway and hotel officials said. 

The 18-hole golf course, so tough that many players quit on the 13th hole, will be made easier, and Greg Norman's "name will no longer be associated with the course," hotel managers say. 

Jay Morrish is heading golf course renovations, which will include elevating some of the greens, improving drainage and other upgrades. 

Together, the changes will help the hotel and speedway take advantage of each other's power to draw visitors, officials said. 

The sales and marketing staffs of each venue will promote them together, speedway and hotel officials said Monday during a news conference. 

"With golf on this side and all of the excitement of the speedway across the street, we know that this is a destination unlike any other," said Sam Oliasami, general manager of the Doral Tesoro. 

The two groups will jointly seek out conference business from state associations and other groups, said Eddie Gossage, the speedway's general manager. 

"We're a tourism attraction, and our appeal goes way beyond race week," Gossage said. "We have events booked out here 300 days a year. If we can bring people to the hotel and golf course, they can bring people to the driving school and the Speedway Club." 

The marketing alliance was launched with some fanfare at the hotel Thursday, which has ailed financially since it opened as the Westin Beechwood less than a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. 

The full-service hotel, in the midst of a mesquite wood on prairie 10 miles north of downtown Fort Worth, is unique in the market. When it opened, its owners said they hoped to keep its rooms full with niche customers and conferences seeking a bucolic setting. 

The hotel has pillow-top mattresses, cordless phones, 24-hour room service and in-room safes. It has 5,000 square feet of outdoor meeting space and a 9,000-square-foot ballroom. 

But, even with those business and resort perks, the plan proved as challenging as the golf course. CoServ Realty bought it out of bankruptcy a month after it opened. 

In summer 2001, before the hotel opened, 300 trees were removed from the golf course after Norman agreed that it was too punishing for most golfers, even some pros. 

In October, CRH Hospitality, a limited partnership, took possession of CoServ Realty and in November named Interstate Hotels & Resorts of Washington, D.C., as the property manager. 

Local managers were replaced and the company set out to reshape the marketing tack. 

Interstate Hotels bought the rights to the Doral name from the famed Florida resort. It now operates more than 400 hotels across the country, including six under the Doral name, each with a golf course. 

Local managers are working with their sales staffs to make the hotel a destination and to elevate is stature across the state and country. 

"The approach that we are bringing is to emphasize direct sales, rather than waiting on people to come to us," Oliasami said. "What was done in the past was not necessarily wrong, but we are going to be doing more of it." 

-----To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com 

(c) 2003, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 


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