Skift Take
Even with rising demand for South American extended stay hotels, there is still a challenge to convince local owners and developers to build the brand's larger room product.
The Homewood Suites by Hilton extended stay brand is making a push into Latin America, where this type of select service hotel model is vastly under represented, with a new prototype hotel product customized for the individual destinations from Santo Domingo to Sao Paulo.
Lessons learned during this international expansion will also help inform future plans to move into Europe as well.
Homewood Suites is scheduled to open as many as 30 new hotels in the next four to five years beginning as soon as 2016. The first new management contract was officially announced earlier this month for the Homewood Suites by Hilton Santo Domingo in the capital of the Dominican Republic. Opening in late 2017, the 120-room property will be the first Homewood Suites in the Caribbean.
For the Latin American hotels, Bill Duncan, global head of brand management at Homewood Suites, says Hilton is "tropicalizing" the specific aesthetics and offering more room variations to align with each country wh