Happy Travel And Tourism Week! Here’s How Lloyd Hospitality Is Expanding The Industry
As we approach the unofficial start of summer, this is a week to celebrate the visitor industry.
National Travel and Tourism Week runs May 19-25 and is a chance to recognize the impact the travel industry has on our communities.
At Lloyd Companies, our Lloyd Hospitality team is hard at work growing our portfolio in exciting ways and celebrating recent successes. For instance, our Hilton Garden Inn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, continues to build on its exemplary work companywide, recently becoming one of 35 Hilton Garden Inn hotels worldwide to receive the brand’s Award of Excellence, placing it in the top 3 percent of its nearly 1,010 global counterparts.
“They continue to perform very well in regard to others in the industry and they’re also seeing really good growth year-over-year,” said Jennifer Seifert-Brenna, vice president of Lloyd Hospitality.
In South Dakota, Lloyd Hospitality is on track with two major projects on both sides of the state.
The 216-room Canopy by Hilton in downtown Sioux Falls is installing furniture, fixtures and equipment on the top two floors – six and seven – and continuing down to the lobby to finish off the additional floors.
“We’ll be bringing in things like headboards, mirrors, desks, couches, chairs and mattresses on the upper floors in June and then working our way down,” Seifert-Brenna said. “Each floor looks different from top to bottom at this point, but we’re making good progress across the entire building.”
The plan is to open in September.
General manager Hristiyana Ralinova and director of sales and marketing Richard Fischer are growing their leadership team by bringing on other key positions by mid-year.
“And then in August we’ll start hiring for hourly positions and bringing them on in September, so that will be a full-time endeavor shortly, because we anticipate bringing on over 100 employees in full-time and part-time roles,” Seifert-Brenna said. “So far we’ve had a really good response and great candidates so we hope that continues. Our applicants love the new hotel and working in a full-service upper-upscale property is really desirable for a lot of people.”
In Rapid City, the 117-room Hyatt Place hotel in Lloyd’s Block 5 downtown development has completed two model rooms.
“We use these for construction review and to verify qualify,” Seifert-Brenna said. “We’ve mapped out everything on the floor, like where headboards land and electricity is needed, so it was fun to go through and make adjustments as needed and then we’ll be placing our big order of furniture and fixtures to arrive late this year.”
The hotel is on track for a late first quarter opening in 2025 and already has a large tour group coming through in May.
General manager Erik Olsby, who has a long career in the hospitality industry in western South Dakota, has started his new role and will begin growing his team.
The new hotel is having an impact on hiring here too, Seifert-Brenna said.
“We’re seeing inquiries coming through because it’s the first new downtown hotel in more than 30 years, so that’s going to be very desirable for employees,” she said.
Lloyd Hospitality also is planning for the future.
“We have a couple projects in our three-state region that we’re looking at right now as far as design and what a footprint could look like,” Seifert-Brenna said. “We’re primarily looking at similar projects to what’s underway now – mixed use development that have a hotel, apartments, commercial and parking components to them. We have several in the pipeline that we’d like to get in the ground in 2026, but they just take a lot longer to develop because there are so many components to them.”
So, stay tuned! Look forward to more updates from Lloyd Hospitality in the coming months.
