Chicago Hotels Are Zeroing In On Local Identity
Chicago’s hoteliers are leaning into local flair as the city's tourism performed better than its national competitors in 2025.
There’s a healthy mix of new builds, renovations and conversions of other property types making up the hotel construction activity in the city, said panelists at Bisnow’s Chicago Hospitality Summit. Hotel owners and operators at the event held Dec. 3 at The Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel Chicago Loop are also pivoting from standard hotel fare to concepts designed for specific locales.
“We're not just doing cookie-cutter projects at the end of the day,” said Alissa Bozza, associate and project designer at HKS. “We're having to come up with a distinct viewpoint, a distinct vision for any of these local projects, especially in a limited service kind of perspective.”
While older generations are more focused on brand loyalty and racking up points, there’s a significant change in the younger generation, which values the uniqueness of a hotel stay, Bozza said. As a result, she said she’s seen a lot more owners ask for local style in their properties.
Maverick Hotels and Restaurants CEO Robert Habeeb said that compared to a few decades ago, he isn’t sure there’s a prototype for hotel development anymore. In the past, certain hotel chains prided themselves on producing identical buildings within different towns. Now, more are designed based on the area’s surroundings.
“I recall developing Marriotts in the '90s, and they would say, ‘You want the green bedspread or the blue one,’” Habeeb said. “Now, we're in these incredibly well-defined niches, and it's consumer-driven.”
The focus on local elements, like a fresh concept in a ground-floor retail space, helps attract local visitors that aren’t tourists, Bozza said.
Similar to top-line consensus at Bisnow’s hospitality summit in 2024, panelists hammered home the importance of neighborhood-centric hotel development.
Habeeb, whose company announced a merger earlier this month with Waterford Hotel Group that brought its portfolio to over 50 properties, said the company is getting ready to break ground on a hotel in Pullman and opened a hotel in the Illinois Medical District last year. He said neighborhoods present the untapped potential for further development in the industry because people are starting to think about it as the next frontier outside the CBD.
“We've had really good luck in the neighborhoods in the last year,” Habeeb said.
Even neighborhoods themselves are being designed with a unique tourist and resident experience in mind.
Alderman Bennett Lawson, whose 44th Ward is the top hospitality and tourism neighborhood outside of the city’s downtown area, said the city decided to add some permanence to the neighborhood’s historic LGBTQ+ roots. Businesses were concerned the area would lose some of its identity as residents spread out throughout the city.
Northhalsted added rainbow pylons along the street that have historical plaques honoring members of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history, rainbow crosswalks, and frequent events, Lawson said.
“We have events like crazy to promote the district, not just in June, where everything is rainbow, but for Halloween, for winter walk events, and we draw tourists,” he said.
There have also been conversations surrounding ground-up hotel development in large proposed or currently underway megaprojects like The 78, Bally’s new casino and the new Chicago Bears stadium, Bozza said. People are looking for sites tangential to those projects in those neighborhoods, she said.
From June through August, hotels in the CBD filled nearly 3.6 million room nights, a 4.3% gain over 2024 and passing the previous record set in the summer of 2019, according to Choose Chicago.
That performance is better than peer markets nationally. Nationwide hotel room demand was down 0.5% year-over-year during the summer months.
“The city is really smoking when it comes to hospitality,” Habeeb said.
