Money Makers

This Dallas-area resort makes more money than any other hotel in Texas

The Gaylord boasts the highest hotel revenue in Texas.

Photo courtesy of Gaylord Texan Resort

While Austin may be the revenue-per-hotel-room king among Texas markets, Dallas-Fort Worth — the state’s biggest hotel market — reigns when it comes to overall hotel revenue.

A new report from San Antonio-based hotel consulting firm Source Strategies Inc. shows that in 2017, DFW hotels raked in revenue of a little over $3 billion. The metroplex is followed by Houston (nearly $2.5 billion), Austin (slightly more than $1.4 billion), and San Antonio (just over $1.25 billion). Statewide, hotels pulled in almost $10.9 billion in revenue last year.

Contributing to the staggering DFW figure is Grapevine's Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, which takes the title for the Texas hotel with the most overall room revenue in 2017. According to the report, the 1,511-room hotel produced room revenue of nearly $89.1 million last year.

Coming in behind the Gaylord property for total room revenue in 2017 are:

JW Marriott Austin — $78.9 million
Hilton Anatole, Dallas — $69.1 million
JW Marriott Hill Country, San Antonio — $65.3 million
Omni Dallas Hotel — $57.2 million
Hilton Americas-Houston — $54 million
Hilton Austin — $52.9 million
Marriott Marquis Houston — $50 million

Source Strategies also measured the financial success of hotels by an industry yardstick known as revenue per available room per night, or RevPAR. Based on RevPAR figures, the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas is the top money-making hotel in Texas. While Dallas boasts the leading cash cow, Austin lays claim to the biggest share of the state’s top 10 revenue-generating hotels, six total.

Based on RevPAR figures, the 10 most lucrative Texas hotels for 2017 are:

Ritz-Carlton, Dallas — $319.96
Four Seasons Hotel Austin — $271.56
Hotel Granduca, Houston — $262.77
W Hotel Austin — $254.17
Hotel San José, Austin — $253.43
The Driskill Hotel, Austin — $251.56
Rough Creek Lodge, Iredell — $243.66
Hotel Emma, San Antonio — $239.47
South Congress Hotel, Austin — $237.75
Westin Austin Downtown — $233.52

Key to Austin’s dominance in the revenue category is the overall occupancy rate. The Austin market enjoyed the state’s highest hotel occupancy rate (74.7 percent) in 2017, followed by Waco (71.8 percent), Dallas (69.6 percent), and Fort Worth-Arlington (67.8 percent), according to the Source Strategies report.

Houston’s occupancy rate for 2017 stood at 65.2 percent, barely above the statewide average of 64.8 percent, the report says. At 62.9 percent, San Antonio was a couple of notches below the statewide average.

The report calls Austin “the heartiest lodging market in Texas,” thanks to a “remarkable” RevPAR of $101.92. No other Texas market had RevPAR above $74.

Uptown News

Euro-style Hotel St. Germain in Uptown Dallas closed after 33 years

Google Maps / Flashback Dallas

Hotel St. Germain

A darling boutique hotel in Uptown Dallas that was Dallas' first B&B has closed: Hotel St. Germain, which occupied a turn-of-the-century home at 2516 Maple St., closed its doors and auctioned off its furnishings in an estate sale that took place November 8-10.

A friend of the family that owned the hotel confirmed that it had been closed for nearly a year, and that the property was recently sold to an undisclosed buyer who intends to maintain its lodging status.

It's in a prime location, since Maple Avenue is currently going through a major turnover from bumpy little street to the home of big projects like Maple Terrace, the 22-story residential tower at 3003 Maple Ave.

Hotel St. Germain was opened in 1991 by businesswoman and former New Orleans resident Claire Heymann, the granddaughter of a Paris antiques dealer, who did exactly what preservationists dream about: She took a crumbling old home built in 1900 and transformed it, giving it a stunning makeover and filling it with fine art and antiques: one-of-a-kind sleigh beds, spindly antique desks, amber wall sconces, vintage bathroom fittings, and sparkling crystal chandeliers.

The property had only seven rooms, each unique, and was Dallas' first bed-and-breakfast inn. It also had a quirky in-house restaurant featuring acclaimed chefs of the day such as William Guthrie.

It's disappointing to have missed the sale with its assortment of leaded glass windows, vintage sinks, chandeliers, and French antique furniture.

Flashback Dallas shares a history of the structure, and food writer Mark Stuertz (who co-authored Fork Fight!, the memoir by Pei Wei co-founder Mark Brezinski) wrote a great review of the restaurant in 1997, recounting its colorful past.

"Heymann discovered the property in the late '80s, then a foreclosed, boarded-up hovel facing a wrecking ball, while scouring the area between McKinney and Turtle Creek for an old house worthy of conversion into a small, stylish hotel similar to those she had visited on numerous jaunts to San Francisco," he wrote.

Heymann named it for the St. Germain area of Paris, and filled it with elegant furnishings, many from her antiques dealer mother. Stuertz called the result "an odd mix of romance, quaintness, European-style finery, and antique-collector busyness," "stuffed with fabrics fussily pleated, puddled, lashed and tasseled, as well as handsome furnishings seasoned with art deco accents and shabby chic touches."

The closure was due in part to the fact that Heymann has been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home.

Gary Bellomy, who worked at the hotel, posted an elegy on Facebook, calling her "one of the most complicated and brilliant women I have known."

"Hotel St. Germain, her mad, brilliant brainstorm joins the ranks of Dallas’ unique history," he said. "Many of you will mourn. It is unlikely we will ever see this level of French sophistication in this spot we call home."

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