ECHO Suites Extended Stay by Wyndham celebrated the grand opening of its first location, ECHO Suites Spartanburg in South Carolina, this Wednesday. LODGING was on hand for the ribbon-cutting and tour of the highly anticipated property, which broke ground last October as part of a development pipeline that has grown to nearly 270 ECHO Suites hotels across the United States and Canada. Additional ECHO Suites are slated to open in Texas and Virginia this year, and the brand is on track to have 75 hotels open or under construction by the end of 2026.
“It’s our fastest-growing brand,” said Geoff Ballotti, CEO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, at the event’s press conference. “I think it will remain our fastest-growing brand for some time, given the interest that’s out there in the development community for this type of product. The demand for extended-stay product continues to outpace the supply.”
The developing city of Spartanburg is an example of a market that favors extended stay, with multiple infrastructure projects that draw workers looking for long-term lodgings. Ballotti observed, “Spartanburg County is growing [several] times as fast as Greenville County is,” while Philip Cox, development partner with Mitch Cox Companies and owner of the ECHO Suites Spartanburg, added, “We’re big fans of Spartanburg County, the fastest-growing county last year in the country.” Johnson City, Tennessee-based Mitch Cox Companies is also a big fan of ECHO Suites, having signed franchise agreements to bring the brand to 12 locations in the southeast. The 124-room ECHO Suites prototype requires under two acres of land and has a highly competitive cost per key.
While construction workers will be a major part of the ECHO Suites Spartanburg’s clientele, other types of extended-stay guests, such as traveling nurses and digital nomads, will also find value in the property. The prototype’s guestrooms consist of single- and two-queen studio suites with kitchens as well as efficiently designed public spaces such as a lobby, fitness center, and 24/7 guest laundry. Krishna Paliwal, Wyndham’s head of architecture, design, and construction, and Emily Crawford, corporate sales manager, Sandpiper Hospitality (the hotel’s management company), led a tour of these facilities and highlighted advantageous features for guests. Examples include blackout curtains, which enable night-shift workers to more easily sleep during the day, and individual WiFi access points for each guestroom, which ensures consistent service for each guest even if they use multiple devices. Paliwal and Crawford also pointed out numerous labor-saving features as well as the eye-catching façade and color scheme. Cox summed it up by saying, “The product [Wyndham has] come out with is great from an operational standpoint and works perfectly from an aesthetic standpoint; it really stands out.”
Helping to preserve the integrity and consistency of the product is an exclusive focus on new builds. “We’re not allowing conversions,” said Ballotti. “We’ve had plenty of people that have said, ‘I have an old XYZ brand hotel; will you allow us to convert it to an ECHO Suites?’ We don’t want it. … We want them all to be this prototype that you just toured, as opposed to what can happen to a brand from a product and design standpoint when it accepts conversions.”
Another differentiator for the brand is an approximately 50,000-square-foot prototype that is designed to offer 79 percent of revenue-generating square footage. “That’s the highest in the industry. It just generates more rentable square footage and higher cash returns,” said Ballotti.
From a developer’s perspective, ECHO Suites presents “an opportunity for us to partner with a great company like Wyndham,” said Cox. “They have collaborated with the developers; it’s not just them saying, ‘Hey, this is the product.’ They really listened and took feedback from the owners.” Ballotti added, “We love developing prototypes by experienced developers who have built competitive products and see the opportunity for what they’d like to do differently.”
Bringing even more value to franchisees, Wyndham recently introduced Mandeep Singh as vice president, Extended Stay Operations. Singh brings over 20 years of global experience in extended-stay hotels, corporate housing, serviced apartments, and multi-family properties. In this new role, he will oversee Wyndham’s growing portfolio of extended-stay brands with a focus on ECHO Suites and the new Waterwalk Extended Stay by Wyndham brand.
