The Westin Phoenix Downtown hotel opened Thursday with 242 rooms in the Freeport-McMoRan building at North Central Avenue and West Van Buren Street.
Occupying floors 11-19, the hotel is the first Westin in downtown Phoenix. The next closest Westin hotel to the city’s center is in Scottsdale at the Westin Kierland, a high-end resort and spa.
“Outside its resort at the Westin Kierland, Westin is primarily a business hotel, so you see them in the heart of the urban areas,” said Sally Cooper, a PR consultant for the Westin Phoenix Downtown. “This is their first real hotel here.”
There are three types of rooms available: deluxe guest rooms, corner studio suites and one-bedroom suites. The Westin Phoenix Downtown is opening with a special introductory rate of $139 per night for a limited number and type of rooms through April 30, Cooper said.
If guests are willing to pay a bit more, however, Cooper said the Executive Club Level has the most amenities, especially for frequent travelers.
“Executive Club for a higher rate gives people access to an Executive Club lounge, where they have continental breakfast complimentary every morning and cocktails and hors d’oeuvres every evening,” Cooper said. “It’s a place where they can work, similar to the airline clubs. Those rooms are starting at $379.”
Executive Club rooms and the lounge also include free wireless Internet.
Cooper said the hotel has seen many advantages to moving into a previously built space.
“It’s turned out so far to be a benefit: It’s given us oversized rooms, floor-to-ceiling windows in every room and a ballroom and a workout center,” Cooper said. “It enabled them to open and build up the hotel very quickly because the building was already there.”
Eric Johnson, redevelopment program manager at the City of Phoenix Community and Economic Development Department, noted that the Westin Phoenix Downtown can bring three major impacts to the downtown area: job creation, a new social area and the potential of a name brand.
“The first is creating new jobs,” Johnson said. “There are people who have to be taken care of, and people looking to do it.”
David Roderique, president of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership, estimated there is approximately one job for every room — in this case, 242.
“This should create at least a couple hundred jobs within the functioning of the hotel and the restaurant,” Roderique said. “You could have students end up working at these jobs, people staying there while coming to visit ASU. There’s a lot of synergy in between (the hotel, downtown and ASU).”
However, Cooper released a slightly less optimistic number: 150 opening staffers.
“I don’t have any idea what (staff levels) would look like (at maximum capacity),” Cooper said. “It’s so hard to tell. One hundred fifty is the number they’re starting with, and it may go up, it may go down.”
Johnson noted both the potential revenue and the social impact of the hotel’s Province restaurant.
“The new restaurant provides a new place to eat, experience good food, but also create food and beverage taxes,” Johnson said. “These revenues go directly back into the city.”
The restaurant, located on the street level of the building, is chef Randy Zweiban’s second Province. The menu is seasonal American cuisine “blended with the bold flavors of South America and Spain,” according to documents provided by Cooper.
Johnson also said the Westin Phoenix Downtown would provide the appeal of “name brands.”
“There are travelers who prefer to stay in a certain brand of hotel,” Johnson explained. “The Westin is filling a niche that hasn’t been filled in downtown. The hotels we have do not provide the business-oriented services the Westin provides. It provides a different level of service.”
Though the Westin is not looking to host large crowds coming to the Phoenix Convention Center, instead tailoring itself to a smaller clientele of individual business and leisure travelers, the addition to the number of hotel rooms in downtown Phoenix is promising, Roderique said.
“We are very excited about this, because for a convention center our size, we really have a fairly limited number of hotel rooms within walking distance,” Roderique said. “That is really important to meeting planners when they’re booking conventions. They want to know how many hotel rooms you have close.
“In the past we haven’t had all that many hotel rooms nearby, so this should really help the Convention Center, allowing them to book more activities and more groups,” he said.
Contact the reporter at caitlin.cruz@asu.edu
