Fairfield Inn checks in across the street from airport
Published: July 03, 2009, 12:30 am
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Fairfield Inn & Suites Buffalo-Airport has opened across Genesee Street from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, the latest hotel to join that lodging corridor.
The five-story, 140-room Cheektowaga property opened for business on Wednesday, said Krista Glenn, marketing manager for Buffalo Lodging Associates. It was built on the site of the former Park Plaza hotel, known previously as the Radisson. That hotel was demolished in 2007.
Buffalo Lodging Associates, the hotel management division of Benderson Development, has hotels in nine states and Ontario. Eight of the properties are in the Buffalo area.
The new Fairfield Inn has 30 employees, said Dan Gilliland, the general manager. Room bookings were off to a good start heading into the Independence Day weekend.
“You’re trying to get open as soon as you can to take advantage of the summer traffic,” he said.
The property joins a cluster of hotels already in business across from the airport. Plans for a number of other hotels and related developments in that area have been put on hold or scaled back due to the recession.
For hotel operators, locations near the airport are appealing in part because of Canadians who travel here and spend the night before catching a flight.
But the hotel industry has faced tough times in the recession. From January through May, Erie County hotels’ occupancy rate was 55.9 percent, down from 61.3 percent in the same five-month span in 2008, according to Smith Travel Research. The average daily rate through May was $85.47, down from $85.90 a year earlier.
Gilliland said despite the economic slowdown, the hotel benefits from its location across from the airport and its affiliation with the Marriott name.
When the hotel’s staff was going through training in the week before the opening date, it might have appeared to outsiders like the property was ready for guests.
“We had people trying to check in when we weren’t open,” Gilliland said. Others have dropped in to fill out job applications.
Kimberly Tobias, vice president of Buffalo Lodging’s North Central region, said Marriott’s senior management team described the debut as one of the “smoothest property openings they have encountered to date.”
Meanwhile, Embassy Suites is preparing to open its hotel in the Avant building on Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo. It will host guests starting July 10.
mglynn@buffnews.com
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