The Renaissance Dallas at Legacy West will feature more than 24,000 square feet of conference and meeting space.[/caption]

Corporate travel is already the No. 1 reason people visit Plano, and as Toyota Motor North America, Liberty Mutual, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other corporations prepare to move more than 20,000 employees to Plano, city officials said the local hotel offerings will have to grow to keep pace.

“We are meeting the demand [of visitors] right now,” Visit Plano Director Mark Thompson said. “[But] we want to make sure that we have enough product in the system so that when companies are built … we are able to hold their events [and] their travelers in Plano.”

Plano has 42 hotels with eight more expected to open in 2017 and 2018, including the Renaissance Dallas at Legacy West, according to the July 2016 Smith Travel Research pipeline report.

The STR pipeline report tracks the status of new hotels, from preplanning to completion.

With the fast growth in Plano, it is hard to have projections, Thompson said. However, he said he thinks the eight new hotels expected to open in 2017 and 2018 will keep up with the demand of visitors.

“If you just take Toyota, Liberty Mutual and Chase Bank alone going over to Legacy West, the amount of people coming in to visit them is going to increase our corporate travel quite a bit,” Thompson said. “And it’s not just going to be their people traveling. It’s going to be people who are traveling to call on them.”

Thompson said the more success the city of Plano experiences and the more corporations that move here, the better the hotel industry is expected to be.

“Once those companies get built, as long as our hotels continue to grow then most definitely, I think we will meet the need with the product that we have coming on line,” Thompson said.

Three hotels have opened in Plano this year, including the Courtyard Dallas/Plano/Richardson. After being open for five days, the hotel saw 50 percent occupancy of business, something that is not expected, said Allie Giraldo, general manager at the Courtyard hotel and the soon-to-be Residence Inn Dallas/Plano/Richardson.

“There are a few reasons [for opening another hotel in Plano],” she said. “No. 1—and [this is] the biggest reason—is this market. This market is really growing. There’s a lot of new corporate headquarters coming in.”

Room for growth

As more hotels are added to the city’s skyline, city planners anticipate more to follow as Plano’s remaining vacant land becomes built out.

The city of Plano has roughly 2,900 acres of undeveloped land, 2,300 acres of which is zoned for commercial development and could potentially be transformed into retail areas and hotels, said Eric Hill, development review manager for the city of Plano.

When the Renaissance Dallas at Legacy West opens in July, it will provide visitors with 24,433-square-feet of convention and meeting space. Plano Centre offers a larger space, but it is not connected to a hotel, which is something many visitors want under one roof, Thompson said.

“We can always use more meeting space,” he said. “The challenge is we can’t go after large events like we would like to with [only 24,433]-square-feet of meeting space and then the hotel count only being [304] rooms.”

Plano Centre, located at 2000 E. Spring Creek Parkway, can hold up to 5,000 people for events and conferences but does not offer hotel rooms. The 122,500-square-foot facility sits on 51 acres of land that Thompson said would be ideal for a hotel.

“I think it would be nice to see a hotel build here next to Plano Centre to where you have 120,000 square feet of meeting space and a hotel in front of it because there is no hotel in Plano or Frisco that has that kind of meeting space,” he said.

Hotel developers have approached Plano Centre in the past, but their plans have not panned out due to poor timing, Thompson said.

“I think if it’s going to happen, this is the best time for it to happen,” he said. “The economy is good. All outlooks for the immediate future are good, and so I think this is a great time to see something like that happen.”

The land on which Plano Centre is situated is zoned for general office, which permits hotel development.

There is also room to build a hotel with large convention space on multiple properties elsewhere in Plano, Hill said. Some locations include vacant land near Spring Creek Parkway and the Sam Rayburn Tollway as well as near SH 121 and the President George Bush Turnpike. The majority of these spaces have commercial/hotel zoning.

“We don’t want to find ourselves 10 years from now with too many hotels,” Thompson said. “As long as the corporations keep building over the next several years and the hotels keep a good eye on [corporation growth], I think we’ve got a great mix.”

Diverse hotel options

Hotel developers consider all types of travelers coming to town. Courtyard Hotels, for example, is geared toward short-term corporate travelers. In contrast, Residence Inn hotels are designed for extended stay travelers, Giraldo said.

“[Hotels are] a market-driven product,” Hill said. “We’ve seen a lot of growth over the years … so there are opportunities for new hotels in the city.”