Burnaby’s 45-storey Sovereign tower will soon be home to an Element-branded hotel, which will be part of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (NYSE:HOT) chain.
When the hotel opens February 19, it will be Element’s 15th hotel worldwide, the company announced February 12.
Known as the Element Vancouver Metrotown hotel, the facility will stand out from the other 13 Element hotels in North America as well as the one in Europe, Element Vancouver Metrotown sales manager Ken Boyd told Business in Vancouver.
His hotel will have the same sustainability commitment and is in the process of getting LEED silver certification. The difference will be the extent of offerings and its appearance.
“This particular Element hotel is unique in the sense that we’re not a typical footprint of an Element hotel,” he said. “Typically Element hotels are low-rise and more horizontally-based, so between six and eight floors.”
The Element Vancouver Metrotown will have the same wide corridors and room shapes as the residential units that share the upper floors of the recently built, 45-storey tower.
The hotel will occupy the lower 18 floors, with the 19th being a mechanical floor, Boyd said. The rest of the structure is condominiums.
The hotel has hired its executive team, sales and food and beverage staff but is still seeking to hire front desk agents and housekeepers.
Boyd intends to achieve strong occupancy by appealing to business travelers who have ties with Burnaby-based companies such as Best Buy Canada, Electronic Arts Canada, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers and Ballard Power Systems Inc.
“Clients we’ve been out to visit and introduced the product to have embraced it,” he said. “Because Burnaby is such a growing and thriving green community, people are eager to have additional choices in the [hotel] market.”
Boyd added that his Element hotel will be distinctive among others in the chain in that it has meeting space and access to a full-service restaurant.
Glowbal Group plans to open its 7,000-square-foot, 250-seat Trattoria restaurant the week after the Element hotel opens.
The restaurant group will also open a cocktail bar called The Mini-Bar.
Glowbal’s third establishment in the Bosa Properties-developed Sovereign complex will be a small take-out counter, which it calls Nosh. That eatery will sell sandwiches, pizza, salads, muffins and other items.
“We’re not marketing the Nosh in Burnaby much because it will be a much smaller Nosh than the one that will open in Telus Garden,” Glowbal Group owner Emad Yacoub told BIV.
