Nearly 17 months after floods, NYLO reopens

LOFTY IDEAS: Customer Kelly Healey in The Loft,  the restaurant portion of the recently reopened NYLO Hotel in Warwick. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
LOFTY IDEAS: Customer Kelly Healey in The Loft, the restaurant portion of the recently reopened NYLO Hotel in Warwick. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

The video of the restaurant in the NYLO Hotel in Warwick is hardly on track to win an Oscar. But it almost brought tears to the eyes of Patrick O’Neil. When the executive vice president of NYLO watched the clip, he appreciated how far the 163-room hotel has come since water overwhelmed its first floor in late March 2010.
Nearly 17 months later, workers have carried off the water-soaked furniture, repaired walls and floors, hauled in new mattresses, replaced computer equipment and rebuilt the bar. On Aug. 15, hotel staff welcomed the first guests.
“We tried to put it back exactly the way it was in many aspects,” O’Neil said.
But he said it will likely take more than a year to rebuild the customer base at the hotel, which had been open for just two years before the Pawtuxet River decided to check in.
“The bad part is when you open a hotel you have a ramp-up period and we were just about to hit our stride when the water came in and took it away from us,” O’Neil said.
Texas-based NYLO is now putting on a full-court press to let people know the hotel is back in business and very dry. Earlier this month executives hosted an event at the hotel for the media. Sales staff in Texas and Warwick have been lining up corporate accounts, soliciting functions and have taken to social media to announce the reopening.
O’Neil said the strategy is virtually identical to launching a new hotel. NYLO is helped however, by holding a list of former guests it can directly reach. And some companies allowed the hotel back onto their corporate accounts without going through the typical bidding process, in a nod to the unique situation.
But how will guests feel about sleeping in a hotel where four feet of polluted water stayed the night? O’Neil said he has no indication such a stigma exists. He notes that if people were truly worried about entering previously flooded buildings, no one would visit the Warwick Mall, which water also inundated last year. Instead of dirty water, O’Neil wants guests focused on the unique style of the hotel. Built to resemble an old mill, the hotel features rough, concrete floors and exposed columns in the lobby areas. In rooms, the brick walls are uncovered and windows large.
“We’re a little bit different,” he said. “We’re a fun hotel.”
O’Neil hopes the look and feel will attract a cross section of guests. He expects many to arrive from T.F. Green airport 3 miles away. He also expects vacationers, business travelers, parents of university students and wedding guests.
In many cases, NYLO will need to win that business away from nearby hotels. Warwick alone hosts 16 hotels and 2,235 hotel rooms, including NYLO’s 163 rooms. There are some 13,191 rooms across the state.
And most hotels have the vacancy signs out front. Hotel rooms in the Providence-Warwick area were 76 percent occupied in June, according to data from Smith Travel Research Inc. provided by the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Meanwhile hotel occupancy has been hurt by the sputtering economy, as businesses trim travel budgets and consumers guard their wallets. O’Neil said NYLO – which operates two other hotels, in Texas – is keenly aware of the economy but unworried.
“This isn’t our first rodeo so to speak,” he said. “We’ve had the poor economy. Everybody has all over the place and we’ve weathered it at our two other hotels.” Nonetheless, the decision to reopen the hotel did not come easy. NYLO needed to corral its investors and work with the insurance company. And it needed to rebuild its staff, some of whom left for other jobs while the hotel sat empty.
The hotel now employs about 22 people, down from approximately 50 before the flood. The company also put in place a new general manager, Susan Shaw, who had been the only Rhode Island-based NYLO employee during the hotel’s closure. Eventually, the hotel aims to employ about 50 people again, O’Neil said.
Those employees will serve the type of guests that the city welcomes, said Karen Jedson, director of tourism, culture and development for Warwick. Hotel guests stimulate the economy as they spend money on food and other items.
Jedson said the eclectic nature of the hotel also promises to attract a new group of travelers looking for something different or who are just loyal to the NYLO brand.
The hotel is “just a little bit different than our other hotels,” she said. It is “very enticing to a broader scope of individuals.”
Attracting more individuals also helps city coffers. The city receives a portion of the state hotel tax that it plows into tourism advertising efforts. Jedson said the amount NYLO delivers will depend on a combination of occupancy rates, the room rates and if guests simply move from other hotels in the city.
What the city does know is that the hotel represents the last major business to reopen after last year’s flood devastated dozens of businesses and hundreds of homes.
“This is one of our biggest projects, that we’re happy to say will basically bring us back to before the floods,” Jedson said. &#8226

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