Not many Texas hoteliers can say truthfully that Bonnie and Clyde hid from the law in one of their rooms, or that Elvis Presley once paid a visit to the property. But Don Page can.
He’s the owner of the historic Alcalde Hotel in Gonzales, 73 miles east of San Antonio.
For as storied as his hotel’s past is, however, the reality today is that its business mostly depends on oil field workers. That means trying to survive the oil and gas industry’s boom-and-bust cycle.
Right now, it’s bust, with the price of West Texas Intermediate crude at a little more than $40 per barrel Thursday and thousands of layoffs across the region’s Eagle Ford Shale play.
Page is looking to fill his 18 rooms with tourists to offset the volatility of the energy industry. So he turned to a chain operator.
On Thursday, Page and OYO executives announced that the Alcalde Hotel had become the first historic hotel in the U.S. to sign a franchise agreement with OYO, the world’s second largest hotel chain.
The Alcalde Hotel was built in 1926.
The agreement gives Page access to the chain’s worldwide reservation system — and what the owner envisions will be tourists from the around the world who might want to visit Gonzales for its rich history.
“The first shot at Texas independence happened two miles outside of town. The cannon that the Mexican army came to take sits in our museum,” he said, referring to the Gonzales Memorial Museum.
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Not to mention the Bonnie and Clyde and Elvis connections.
Famed outlaws Bonnie and Clyde stayed in the hotel in January 1934, a few months before they were gunned down by law enforcement officers. According to legend, the couple jumped from one of the hotel’s second floor windows to avoid arrest.
The hotel’s Bonnie and Clyde room features wanted posters of the couple on the wall and the names Bonnie and Clyde embroidered on the pillow cases.
In August 1955, Elvis checked into a room at the hotel to take a nap and later hung out in the lobby the day of his concert in Gonzales, Page said. But he didn’t spend the night.
Thursday’s announcement at the hotel featured a singing Elvis impersonator.
Page managed the hotel for two years and then bought it in March, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down travel and bedeviled the oil industry. It cost him tens of thousands of dollars in bookings.
“It wasn’t the best timing,” he said.
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While unknown to many Americans, OYO operates more than 43,000 properties and one million rooms. It enters into agreements with existing hotels, many of them budget properties. It was founded in India in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, who was just 19 at the time.
The company has grown in the U.S. from one hotel in Dallas in January 2019 to 300 nationwide, including nine in San Antonio, said Raoul Hingle, its U.S. development head.
Page said OYO offered him the best deal of any hotel chain, with no upfront costs to become a franchisee and payments of just nine percent of hotel revenues.
He said other hotel chains “wanted almost $40,000 upfront and 14 to 16 percent of your revenue.”
Hingle said OYO has started signing deal with more upscale properties, such as the Alcalde Hotel, a resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and an inn in Lincoln City, Oregon. OYO also owns the former Hooter’s Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, now called the OYO Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
Hingle said OYO’s expansion plans include more hotels in San Antonio, with the possibility of acquiring one on the River Walk.
The company, backed by Japanese financial institution SoftBank’s Vision Fund and several venture capital firms, was valued at $10 billion in July 2019.
He said the coronavirus has slowed OYO’s acquisition of U.S. hotels to eight a month.
“If it wasn’t for the pandemic, we would be double or triple that,” he said.
Daisy Scheske Freeman, executive director of the Gonzales Chamber of Commerce & Agriculture, said tourism has been down 60 percent in 2020 because of the pandemic.
She added that more publicity for the Alcalde Hotel can only help attract more visitors to the city, with its history and 10 antique shops.
“We have a lot to offer,” she said.
Randy Diamond covers tourism and the travel industry. To read more from Randy, become a subscriber. randy.diamond@express-news.net
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