HOUSTON-Today marks the grand opening of the Westin Houston Memorial City, the only Westin branded hotel that will open in North America this year, according to General Manager Mark Weatherill.
Bounded by I-10 and Gessner Road, the 570,000-square-foot, newly-constructed property features 267 guest rooms including 25 suites with oversized work stations, some with office alcoves. It also offers more than 30,000 square feet of unconstrained meeting and banquet space including a 10,000-square-foot ballroom – making it the seventh largest meeting space in the city, Weatherill points out.
Additional features include: a Hertz Rental Car desk; full-service Business Center with a UPS service desk; an 18th-floor infinity pool with panoramic views of Houston’s skyline; the 024 Lounge; and a Trattoria Il Mulino, a restaurant concept from the folks who created the world famous West Village institution, Il Mulino New York.
Weatherill tells GlobeSt.com that the Westin Houston Memorial City is the Westin brand’s third property in Houston. It is part of the Memorial City Complex, which features three distinct Starwood brands including Four Points Houston Memorial City and the Sheraton Houston West, both of which opened in 2008.
“We needed to be in west Houston to respond to the demand and growth,” Weatherill says. He adds that the market lacked a range of hotel offerings to serve both the corporate base along the I-10 Corridor, also known as the Energy Corridor, and visitors to Memorial City Memorial Hermann Medical Center. In fact, the new Westin has skybridge access to Memorial City Memorial Hermann Medical Center and Memorial City Mall.
“The Westin brings a caliber of property that didn’t exist in the west Houston area,” Weatherill contends. “There hasn’t been a four-star property out here, and we saw a definite need for one.”
Because the Westin Houston Memorial City is the most recent Westin hotel to be built from the ground-up, it features several new innovations that were driven by customer feedback and other research, Weatherill notes. Beyond the Westin Heavenly Bed and Westin Heavenly Bath, the new hotel offers the Heavenly Mirror to provide better lighting in the bathrooms and the Heavenly Meeting Chair, which was specially designed for Westin with the goal of creating an ergonomic chair for meeting attendees.
The timing of Westin’s grand opening is strategic, Weatherill points out. Houston will host the NCAA Final Four next week and the Offshore Technology Conference, the city’s biggest oil and gas event, is scheduled for May 2-5.
“We’re opening and seven days from now, we’re sold out for four days, and then we will welcome guests for the OTC,” Weatherill says, adding that the sales and catering teams have been busy on corporate events, as well as weddings. “Our ramp up will be accelerated because of these events.”
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