More than a year since announcing plans to build a new hotel, Kothari Group and the Victoria Airport Authority (VAA) held a groundbreaking ceremony on Oct. 2 to begin construction of a 129-room hotel in Sidney.
The new TownePlace Suites by Marriott Hotel will be built on 3.5 acres of commercial-zoned land at the corner of Highway 17 and Beacon Avenue West at the Victoria International Airport.
The new hotel is expected to go a long way to helping boost the economy throughout Vancouver Island.
"We're creating something that will make a ripple effect throughout the entire region," Elizabeth Brown, VAA president and CEO, said. "The construction of this hotel will generate hundreds of jobs from the tradespeople who will build it to the hospitality professionals who will keep it running."
Kothari came to the Island about eight years ago looking for a site to build a hotel and in 2020 entered into an understanding with the airport authorities to start working on it.
"We're actually well ahead of schedule," Anupam Kothari, president of Kothari Group, added. "We don't think we'd be quite at this stage at this point, so that's fantastic."
TownPlace Suites is Marriott's upper mid-scale extended stay brand that will join over approximately 520 TownPlace Suites hotels currently open and approximately 440 hotels in the pipeline in Canada and the United States.
"I'm confident this hotel will accommodate travellers across purposes, whether it's for business, leisure or for group purposes," Duncan Chiu, Marriott International senior director of lodging development, Western Canada, said. "There's no doubt this hotel is going to support the growth and the development in the town of Sidney and the growing tourism and business sector here in Greater Victoria."
The new hotel will include a kitchen in every room, an indoor swimming pool, a fitness centre, 1,500 square-feet of meeting space as well as a family restaurant. Guests can also avail of complimentary shuttle service to and from the airport and park and fly options.
The $35-million project has already started construction and will be completed in the fall of 2025.