Colorado Mesa University has been approved by the state government to spend $15 million on a new teaching hotel for business students.
The hotel project, currently called the “Maverick Teaching Hotel” will provide a hands-on learning experience to hospitality management and other business students.
“For at least the last five or six years we have been thinking about this idea of doing a teaching hotel to really provide an opportunity for practical learning for students,” said Vice President for Intergovernmental and Community Affairs Derek Wagner, a major leader on the project.
“It is going to provide a great hands-on laboratory for students in all different disciplines within the business department to go in and practice what they are learning. There are opportunities for accounting students, for management students, for human resources, for marketing students and of course hospitality management students,” Wagner said.
CMU officials, according to Wagner, have conducted feasibility studies and worked with other hotels in the area to identify a niche in the market so the new hotel wouldn’t compete with local businesses.
“We are trying to do a teaching environment hotel with a unique fit and finish that we don’t think will be in direct competition with the other hotels in the area,” Wagner said.
“A really well run, independent, boutique hotel is something that isn’t in the Grand Junction Market,” said Britt Mathwich, assistant professor of business in the hospitality management concentration, who worked in the resort industry for almost 40 years.
“I see our teaching hotel as being a really unique property with an increased level of service,” Mathwich said. “We are looking at making it a 3 to 3.5 star location with about 60-80 rooms.”
The project will use only CMU funds, require no state subsidization and hopes to become self-sustaining.
“We have been approved for a $15 million project, but our expectation is that it will cost less. It depends on a few different things including what the eventual site ends up being if we have to tear down houses or build new infrastructure,” Wagner said. “Our goal is to not lose money on the project, to be self-sustaining for sure, but our primary objective is to provide these academic experiences to students. We don’t need another thing to subsidize so the hope is that it will at least break even but if it provides more revenue that would be great as well.”
“The only major con to the project would be if it were to not be as financially successful as expected. However, we have done the feasibility studies and I am very confident in the future of the hotel,” Wagner said.
While approved and planned, the hotel’s details, including location, are still being finalized. The planning team still must decide on a location.
“We are looking at a few different locations now but I expect that it will be somewhere in the west, central zone of campus, kind of in between the main campus and the engineering building,” Wagner said.
This project will most likely not affect current students as it is not set to be completed for several years.
“We are still working through the details on the timeline. Our hope is that in the next couple years we will have this thing up and operating fully. It just depends on when we break ground,” said Wagner.
Regardless of the timeline, CMU feels the project still demonstrates exciting growth for the university.
“Every opportunity that we get to give students ways to apply what they are learning in the classroom and to get real-world experience before they graduate we try to take. The teaching hotel is just another example of that mission,” said Wagner.
