Take a close look at the shiny, newly completed renovations at downtown Salt Lake City’s Marriott Downtown at City Creek and you can see other big trends.
The 510-room hotel that sits kitty-corner from the Salt Palace Convention Center on West Temple is putting the last touches on a three-year face-lift worth “tens of millions,” according to its managers, who withheld a more specific price tag.
The rolling refresh of the iconic 44-year-old property has included a spruced-up entrance and lobby and modernized guest rooms, ballrooms and meeting spaces, along with overhauls of the hotel’s restaurant, Salt Stone, and cocktail bar, Destinations Lounge.
The redone spaces sparkle with trendy new decor and color themes as well as new furniture, ceilings, lighting, carpeting and other features, while also holding onto some of the hotel’s signature marble flooring and chandelier fixtures.
General Manager Andreo Girardi said in a statement that the remodel highlighted for guests “the best of both worlds — the heritage and history of Salt Lake City’s flagship downtown hotel, combined with the comfort and style of a newly refreshed property.”
He added in an interview that the remodel is expected to make the hotel — one of nearly a dozen the global Marriott chain operates in Salt Lake City — more competitive for at least another five to 10 years in an increasingly crowded downtown hospitality market.
The work has been done, Girardi added, while the hotel remained open during several record years of patronage and occupancy coming out of the pandemic.
Downtown hotel sees ‘record years’
That lift in stays, Girardi said, has come even as a crush of new hotels with hundreds of rooms have opened nearby in the central business district, including the towering Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City attached to the Salt Palace across the street, with 700 rooms spread over 25 floors.
“It actually created a new landscape for us, where we have attracted from the bigger conventions,” Girardi said on a recent tour. “In many ways, we couldn’t be happier than we are.”
The upswing has also been bolstered, he said, by a stream of business and leisure travelers and corporate event planners who remain loyal to Marriott’s international brand. The hotel now boasts 25,000 square-feet of meeting space.
And as the city’s restaurant scene has gained in notoriety in recent years, Marriott managers say they are zeroing in on hiring a new executive chef for Salt Stone.
Girardi said the eatery would likely hold onto a tradition of serving distinct American fare with locally sourced ingredients, but with the prospect of added flair and variety under a new chef.
“A lot of our new approach,” he added, “will be dictated by who that person is. We obviously want someone who is as passionate about the concept as we are.”
A virtual boom post-pandemic
For almost 10 years prior to the construction and opening of the Salt Lake County-backed Hyatt Regency, many in Utah’s hospitality sector fretted that the convention hotel could pose unfair competition and suppress demand by luring away tourists and business travelers with its newer spaces and more expansive meeting halls.
Yet since its 2020 groundbreaking, there has been something of a boom in hotel construction and renovations, with hundreds of rooms added along with the Hyatt Regency for guests visiting the state for business, family visits, conventions or outdoor adventures on ski slopes or in state and national parks.
According to tourism-boosting agency Visit Salt Lake, the city is home to somewhere above 19,000 guest rooms, with 8,000 of those downtown in walking proximity to the Salt Palace.
Organizers for the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City say they will need to book upwards of 24,000 rooms to host that event.
In central business district alone, on top of the 700-room Hyatt Regency, the twin-branded Le Méridien / Element across from the Delta Center opened in 2023 with 270 rooms total. The innovative boutique Asher Adams hotel built onto the Union Pacific Depot at The Gateway offers 225 new rooms.
A recreation-oriented, 50-key hotel called evo started welcoming guests in the Granary District in 2022, part of a trend of boutique hotels catering to younger customers. Last year, the Radisson Salt Lake City Downtown launched into an overhaul of its 381 rooms on South Temple.
And of course, Utah Jazz owners Smith Entertainment Group along with city and county officials are pursuing a new multiblock sports, entertainment, culture and convention district based around a Delta Center refresh.
Those plans are supposed to include a high-rise hotel along with substantial remakes of the Salt Palace, Abravanel Hall and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and other amenities.
Officials with Property Reserve, a real estate arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced in August they will close and demolish the nearby Salt Lake Plaza on South Temple starting Nov. 1.