Durango gets its first new hotels since 1997

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JERRY McBRIDE/Durango Herald

Bouges, who uses only one name, with Western Sky Woodworks, works to finish the lobby of the Holiday Inn & Suites on U.S. Highway 160. The new inn, along with Homewood Suites, which is being built in Bodo Industrial Park, will add 194 rooms to Durangos inventory.

JERRY McBRIDE/Durango Herald

Bouges, who uses only one name, with Western Sky Woodworks, works to finish the lobby of the Holiday Inn & Suites on U.S. Highway 160. The new inn, along with Homewood Suites, which is being built in Bodo Industrial Park, will add 194 rooms to Durangos inventory.

Welcome to Durango signs greet the tourists, but the orange neon of No Vacancy probably sends them on their way.

Durango boasts some of the highest hotel occupancy rates in Colorado, reaching 85 percent and higher in August during the height of the tourist season, according to state lodging statistics, but 2013 should be a more inviting year.

For the first time since the Marriott Residence Inn opened in 1997, Durango is about to get a new hotel, according to the Durango Area Tourism Office. In the same period, Durango lost at least two hotels, both on North Main, while others have undergone conversions to condos.

The Holiday Inn & Suites, is set to open by mid-January, which in turn will be followed by another new hotel, a Homewood Suites, scheduled to open early this summer.

The two new inns would add a total of 194 rooms, increasing the citys inventory of 1,734 hotel rooms by 11 percent.

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Durango gets its first new hotels since 1997