On The Road, It's Home Suite Home

It's not often you can identify an innovation that is an unqualified success, one that everyone would like to patent.

But for the business traveler, the all-suite hotel falls into that category. Barely five years old, the idea of offering chains of hotel rooms that are really suites, complete with their own living rooms, dining areas and kitchens - all for about the same prices as regular rooms - has become the industry's hottest trend.

Many cities for years have had individual suite hotels in scattered locations, often in renovated apartment houses. But many of those didn't offer the amenities needed to attract upscale commercial travelers, amenities such as full-service restaurants, a bar, meeting rooms or a health club. Many of their guests were travelers on a budget, staying in one city a week or more, who were trying to save money by preparing some of their own meals.

Today, the market is the upscale business traveler, and every major hotel chain has an all-suite division. In addition to a number of smaller companies that pioneered the recent wave, some of the large chains have dozens of properties open and are planning or building others across the country.

Embassy Suites, owned by Holiday Corp., is the largest with 23,200 suites open. It is followed by Residence Inns by Marriott with 16,000 suites. Other national or regional operators catering to the business-travel market include Guest Quarters, Quality International, Lexington Hotels, Pickett Suites and Radisson Suites.

All-suite hotels "are here to stay," said L. Clarke Blynn, a principal in the Philadelphia office of Pannell Kerr Forster, a national accounting and hotel-consulting firm. "They're not a fad."

According to Pannell Kerr, which does extensive market research on the hospitality industry, only 3 percent of U.S. hotel rooms now are in all-suite properties, but that could go as high as 10 percent in a few years, Blynn said.

In the metropolitan Chicago area, for example, six of the 18 hotels under construction are all-suite, Pannell Kerr found.

Most all-suite hotels these days have everything a full-service hotel does, with the added attraction of more spacious accommodations, giving the guest a place to spread out work, entertain clients or friends, and eat a meal in comfortable surroundings. Many of the new suite hotels are being built around atriums. Others resemble garden-apartment complexes.