New Concept in Lodging--Homey Touch : Country Side Inn Has a Different Look
A harried Denver attorney flew into town to visit a Newport Beach client.
But the attorney--who asked not to be named--didn’t stay at the local Holiday Inn or Ramada Inn. And he felt uneasy when his client sent him to a place he’d never heard of before--the Country Side Inn.
When the tired lawyer turned the key to his room at the three-month-old Newport Beach hotel, however, something unusual struck him: “For five seconds, or so, I actually did feel like I was in the countryside,” he said.
That feeling--the notion of being in a place where the tempo is relaxed and the atmosphere homey--is exactly what Developer Donald Ayers Jr. envisioned when he devised the Country Side Inn concept three years ago.
“We didn’t want to be like everyone else,” said Ayers, president of Frank H. Ayers & Son Construction Co., which has built 10,000 homes in four counties since 1960. “Our atmosphere sets us apart in the hospitality industry.”
With home-building as a background, the Huntington Beach-based developer is trying to carve out a new niche in the hotel market by building a series of low-budget hotels with Holiday Inn-like prices and amenities, but the interior aura of homey, backcountry inns.
Industry consultants are mostly taking a wait-and-see attitude.
‘Unique Features’
“They’re trying to set themselves apart through the use of design,” said Larry Kantor, senior consultant at the Newport Beach office of Pannell Kerr Forster, an accounting firm that specializes in hotel consulting. “They have standard-sized guest rooms, but unique features inside them.”
Ayers calls his latest hotel--the third of a series of proposed California lodgings--”a house with 176 rooms.”
But that “house” is just a five-minute drive from John Wayne Airport. Ayers saved on high real estate costs by locating on the less-trafficked Bristol Street instead of the high-rent MacArthur Boulevard.
Over the past two years, he has opened smaller Country Side Inns in Cardiff and Alpine--also in areas where real estate costs are relatively low. He plans to build another 100-room facility in Riverside within the next two years.
What’s more, he said, “I’m still looking for other locations.”
His Children Help
With those plans, Ayers’ strategy of running a hotel with the help of his children may soon spread the family very thin. Ayers currently operates the Newport Beach hotel with the aid of four of his five children, who do everything from managing the hotel’s French restaurant to manning the front desk.
On paper, the $8-million inn might sound like every other mid-priced hotel in Orange County--but it certainly doesn’t look like them.
Many of the guest rooms have country-like features such as canopy beds, ceiling fans, reproduction antique furniture and even imitation fireplaces. Although these features are generally low-cost, they are high-visibility touches that can appeal to corporate customers who may tire of the standard four white walls and polyester drapes.
The antique furniture in the lobby--and the antique reproductions in the rooms--were all selected by Ayers’ 24-year-old daughter, Allyson. “The object was to get a different look, like a French chateau,” said the graduate of New York’s Parsons School of Design.
“We wanted to be affordable,” she said, “so we couldn’t put antiques in all the rooms.”
So far, the hotel--with rates starting at $68 per night--has strongly appealed to government officials doing business in the Newport Beach area, according to Rosalind Williams, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. “A lot of companies can’t afford to spend upwards of $100 a night for a room,” she said.
One local competitor, however, expressed doubts about the Country Side Inn’s concept.
“It sounds to me like they may be more homey than your average Hilton or Sheraton,” said Ashley Lawrence, general manager of the three-year-old Doryman’s Inn, a Newport Beach bed-and-breakfast, “but people who stay near the airport don’t care about that kind of homeyness. They’d probably rather have the first-class service of a big hotel.”
But the Country Side Inn does offer some amenities more commonly found in larger facilities. For example, it has 5,000 square feet of meeting space--and an adjoining 6,000 square feet of courtyard space. As a result, it is attracting meetings, such as a recent county Republican get-together.
The inn’s biggest problem to date is getting its name known. Because it is not part of a big chain, few travel agents bother to book clients there. And while occupancy over the first two months climbed from 43% in June to more than 50% in July, it is still running about 20% below other area lodgings.
But industry consultants say it commonly takes at least two years for new hotels to build up their customer bases.
Ayers admits that in the early going, he has discovered “there’s not a lot of money to be made in the hotel business.”
