A new Hyatt Place opened today in West Raleigh near the RBC Center.

The developer of the 132-room hotel, the Atlanta firm Southern States Management, which also owns the North Raleigh Hilton, expects it to be the first hotel in the Raleigh area to achieve LEED certification. It has electric car charging stations, 30 solar panels and LED lighting, among other green features.

It also has 5,500 square feet of meeting space.

The Hyatt Place is the second new hotel to open near the RBC Center in recent years. A 99-room Wingate Inn & Suites opened in late 2010.
 

Travel and Leisure magazine has ranked Cary's Umstead Hotel and Spa as the 10th best large-city hotel in the U.S. and Canada.

The rankings are based on votes submitted by the magazine's readers for its 16th annual World's Best Awards.

The Umstead is the only North Carolina hotel in the top 50. It was ranked 34th last year.

Umstead is the brainchild of philanthropist and businesswoman Ann Goodnight, SAS founder Jim Goodnight's wife.

It has 150 rooms and suites on a 12-acre site. 

For a list of Travel and Leisure's world hotel rankings go here.

HVM, which manages extended-stay hotels across the country, plans to move its headquarters to Charlotte from Spartanburg, S.C.

The company plans to create 170 jobs over three years in Charlotte, N.C. officials announced today. HVM will receive financial incentives worth up to $4.7 million from the state, if it meets hiring goals.

The new jobs will pay average annual salaries of $83,580, the N.C. Department of Commerce announced. That's above the Mecklenburg County average of $51,584.

HVM owns and operates 685 Extended Stay Hotels, including 33 in North Carolina. The company also considered moving its headquarters to Tennessee.

“After careful consideration, we have determined that, as a leader in the hospitality industry, the company’s growing business and commercial needs will be better served from corporate headquarters in a major, national market and transportation hub," said CEO Gary DeLapp, in a statement released by Gov. Bev Perdue's office.

“Charlotte, in addition to being home to seven of our hotel properties, provides an excellent nucleus for our plans and expectations for growth."

Extended Stay filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 2009, less than two years after it was acquired in an $8 billion leveraged buyout.

Last May, the company was purchased out of bankruptcy by an investment group that included Paulson & Co. and Blackstone Group.

As part of its incentives deal with the state, HVM will be required to submit audited financial reports annually.

It isn't unusual for the folks over at N.C. Central University to spend part of their August shoehorning students into area hotels when demand for on-campus housing exceeds supply.

That's not happening this year, thanks to a philosophical shift in the way the university finds on-campus spots for students.

Until now, housing assignments were done on a first-come, first-serve basis and occasionally resulted in housing crunches like the NCCU had last year, when hundreds of students were placed in the Millennium Hotel for a semester.

But as the semester begins this week, NCCU will avoid a repeat of that scenario, said Chancellor Charlie Nelms. It will do so by placing a new emphasis on housing for freshmen; the university told returning students months ago that freshmen would be given priority, so older students may want to seek off-campus housing on their own, Nelms said.

NCCU set aside 2,400 beds, enough for all new freshman, and had about 1,000 more on campus for older students. The rest are expected to find other housing.

The emphasis on freshman housing is an attempt to ease the college transition and make sure those students stay in school to become sophomores, and juniors, and seniors, Nelms said.

"We know there's a connection between living on campus and student retention," he said. "And if you're on campus and walk down teh hall, you're likely to strike up a conversation. You have those serendipitous interactions that are really important."

Classes start today.

InnKeepers USA Trust, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based real estate investment trust that owns 49 percent of the downtown Raleigh Sheraton, has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in New York.

The REIT owns or has an interest in 73 hotels in 20 states with about 10,000 rooms.

InnKeepers was part of a joint venture, Genwood Raleigh LLC, that bought the Sheraton in August 2006 for $22 million.

The property has a $32 million loan on it that matures in November of 2012, according to Wake County property records.

Bloomberg News reports that under the reorganization plan a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Holding, one of the secured lenders, would end up with all the new stock in exchange for $238 million in debt.

The other secured lenders have not agreed to the reorganization plan as of yet.

InnKeepers listed $1.52 billion in debt and $1.5 billion in assets.

Despite the still-shaky economy and an ongoing slump in business and leisure travel, the Triangle continues to attract new hotels.

Among the latest additions: an Embassy Suites that opened today at Brier Creek near the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

That hotel's owner, the Winwood Hospitality Group of Morrisville, also plans to build a 154-room Hilton Garden Inn and a 135-room Hampton Inn & Suites near Raleigh's Crabtree Valley Mall.

Last month, this region's first Aloft Hotel opened in Chapel Hill with 130 rooms. And a a 99-room Wingate Inn & Suites is scheduled to open in West Raleigh near the RBC Center in October.

The first Value Place extended stay hotel in the Triangle has opened in Apex.

The 121-room hotel is located at the intersection of I-55 and U.S. 1 at 901 Lufkin Road.  

Value Place is among the fastest growing hotel chains in the country, offering guests no frills suites with weekly rates starting at $179.99.  

The Apex hotel is the eighth Value Place in the state. The company hopes to open at least six hotels in the Triangle within 10 years.

At Value Place, most of the amenities that guests take for granted at traditional hotels, such as a coffee maker, high-speed Internet and regular cleaning service, cost extra.

The approach has proven attractive at a time when corporations are slashing travel budgets and more people find themselves in housing limbo because they have relocated but can't sell the home they left behind or simply because they are out of work.

A new Hilton extended stay hotel is planned for a site in Morrisville near the intersection of Interstate 540 and N.C. 54.

The Home2 Suites will be four stories and include 104 suites.

Hilton launched the Home2 Suites brand in early 2009 and it has become the company's fastest growing brand. In late January the company broke ground on the first Home2 Suites in Fayetteville. As of the end of the first quarter of 2010, 60 more have been approved with 30 more in the pipeline.

Home2 Suites estimates that it will open 100 properties by year-end 2013, with 60 to 70 per year thereafter.

Home2 Suites properties include studios and one-bedroom suites that range from 323 to 509 square feet. 

Another extended-stay brand, Value Place, is building a new hotel in Apex that was supposed to be completed this month. It will be the company's first in the Triangle.

Value Place hopes to open at least six hotels in the Triangle within 10 years. 

Travel + Leisure magazine has named the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary as one of its top 500 Hotels in the World for 2010.

The luxury hotel, which opened in Jan. 2007, is the brainchild of philanthropist and businesswoman Ann Goodnight, wife of SAS co-founder and billionaire Jim Goodnight.

It's one of only three North Carolina hotels on the Travel + Leisure list. The others are both in Asheville: the Inn on Biltmore Estate and Richmond Hill Inn.

The magazine cites the Umstead's "art-filled public spaces on 12 wooded acres," and recommends room 103 as the "room to book," with a patio facing the herb garden and three-acre lake.

Raleigh-based Concord Hospitality Enterprises, a developer and operator of hotels, is forming a $300 million private equity fund to buy distressed hotels and debt.

The company said in a release today that it expects the fund to close within the next 90 days.

Concord has distinguished itself during the downturn by continuing to move forward on a handful of projects despite a credit crunch and a slowdown in travel.

Last Christmas, the company opened the $55 million Renaissance Raleigh Hotel at North Hills.

Concord wants to double its portfolio to at least 100 hotels by 2012. The company already provides management services for 57 hotels throughout the United States and Canada.

Distressed hotel sellers are expected to flood the market with fire-sale properties as their debt comes due in the coming months.

Concord, which unloaded 20 hotels at the top of the market in 2007 for $440 million, entering the downturn with very little short-term debt.

"The fund will allow us to continue our plan to double the size of our portfolio within the next few years, despite the recession," Mark Laport, Concord's president and CEO, said in the release. "We believe there will be attractive acquisition opportunities both for hotels and hotel debt, and we expect to be a significant player in those markets."