Hotel Boom in Downtown Fort Worth

By 2025, half of all hotels operating in Downtown Fort Worth will have opened after 2015.

A new hotel property has opened once a year for the past 5 years. Just two of these hotels are new construction, the 16-story Marriott AC and the 8-story Hampton Inn. All of the rest are conversions of existing buildings. The Sandman, Kimpton and Sinclair Autograph Collection are all conversions of historic office buildings, while the Aloft is a partial conversion of a contemporary office building. The Fairfield Inn and Le Méridian are extensive renovations of buildings that were originally built as hotels.

The streak of hotel openings appears to be breaking this year, but will likely be made up for as two hotels are under construction and expected to open in 2023.

The 245-room Sandman Signature, located in the historic W.T. Waggoner Building, is booking rooms for February 2023. The Waggoner Building was most recently occupied by XTO Energy.

The Avid Hotel is a 104-room, more budget hotel on the outskirts of downtown on Samuels Ave, neighboring the Towneplace Suites.

A third hotel, the Le Méridien, is also under construction in the former Hilton Annex building, which has been vacant for decades. The Le Méridien will include 189 rooms, an outdoor rooftop pool and rooftop patio.

Hotels under construction

The growth is not showing signs of slowing down, either. A number of additional hotels are on the drawing board, including a possible Residence Inn in the formerly-XTO-owned Baker Building (formerly the Bob R. Simpson Building) by Icon Lodging, a 400-room expansion of the existing Omni Hotel, and a teased hotel in the former W.I. Cook Hospital on Lancaster.

Additionally, city officials have a vision for a 1,000-room headquarters hotel where the current Convention Center annex stands. The plan is to demolish the annex, straighten Commerce Street, and use the leftover block to build a hotel to support the Convention Center, which has a large expansion planned.

By 2026, nearly half of all rooms in downtown will have opened in a 10-year span between 2016 and 2026, outpacing nearly a century of previous development.