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Hilton University of Houston is set to receive a $30.4M facelift to better serve its students and the surrounding community.
The hotel serves as a teaching tool for students of the UH's Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. The renovation and expansion will nearly double the number of guest rooms available to 151 with the addition of a five-story tower above the south wing.
“This expansion is our future,” Hilton College Dean Dennis Reynolds said in a release. “The constraint of having only 86 rooms has made us an anomaly in the marketplace, but we are, in fact, a full-service Hilton franchisee. Our new 151-room hotel will provide for a more realistic learning experience for our students because we will be operating in a manner more typical of a full-service, non-teaching hotel.”
Hilton College is the only hospitality program in the world where students work and take classes in an internationally branded, full-service hotel, according to the release. Seventy percent of the hotel's team members are students.
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The expansion was approved by the University of Houston System Board of Regents. The project will be funded through a revenue bond and will be repaid with hotel revenues, per the release.
Other preliminary plans for the hotel renovation include replacing six suites on the second floor with executive meeting space and renovating the courtyard connecting the north, south and west wings. The increased meeting and event space is expected to increase overnight stays for large parties such as weddings and conferences.
Reynolds is leading a committee to select the architect and contractor. Construction is expected to begin within 18 months of selecting those parties and be completed in late 2022 or early 2023.
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