Why universities are bringing hotels on campus?

Long gone are those days when one had to go about the entire city to look for safe, comfortable and affordable recourses of accommodation after admitting his/her ward in the university or when taking a tour of the campus. Today, the picture has completely reversed and universities are constructing hotels within their campus itself to ease out the search for the students and their families. Apart from convenience, there are several other factors that have led to the growth of this strategy and would invariably prove beneficial in the long run.

• Convenience

Firstly, during the course of new admission, the universities often face a shortage of accommodation; the number of foreign students looking forward to pursuing their graduation degree from these colleges is much more than one would expect them to be. Also, considering the volume of academic and sports events and conferences conducted all year round attracts a lot of students from the participating universities and sometimes even their families are invited to these occasions. Therefore, according to the stalwarts of marketing, this approach will lend the universities a sense of transparent planning and vision for the upcoming days. For instance, the California State University in Northridge, Los Angeles, visitors have been granted the privilege to mark their stay in the campus hotel known as Hilton Garden Inn and procured with a capacity of 150 rooms. The Celeste Hotel situated in the University of Central Florida, Orlando is nearing completion and is expected to have 179 rooms in total.

• Commercialization

Secondly, commercialization too has been imparted with an influential responsibility when it comes to building hotels in the realms of the campus. With swollen opportunities for accommodation and classified facilities, the hotels are likely to draw visitors who are willing to spend some time with the students from their families other than the official events. Additionally, when it comes to co-developed projects, the universities lease their land for the ownership of their partners for some stipulated years thus generating a considerable chunk of revenue to enhance their infrastructure. Also, building a hotel inside the campus would mark the universities on the map of luster and open doors for profitable propositions for academic partnerships and branding. This is the fundamental reason why the existing universities are undertaking projects of construction at par with the newbies. The Biddle hotel, for example, has been set up on the Bloomington Campus of Indiana University that was cast into being in 1960 and around $8 million was sanctioned for the renovation process including the expansion of doorways, tearing down of the walls and installing the latest furnishings and technologies to step up the game. One cannot deny the truth that the literacy rate has taken a flight and thereby attained heights like never before; this has led to the increase in the number of students visiting the universities in the last few decades which in turn has escalated the number of people visiting the campuses and resorting to these choices of accommodation.

• Enhancement of academic programs

Lastly, drawing an investor towards a project of this magnitude requires much more than capital and experience. The objective of the universities is to extend their campus by acres and hence, they should be working with someone who would relate to this agenda and is ready to work very closely alongside the university administration to review and work according to the requirements and goals of it. Moreover, building hotels in the campus gives way to a win-win situation for both the authorities and the students alike; the students practicing management or courses attached to tourism can put into practice their lessons at the same spot. The chain of Nashville hotels too has asserted that their objective is to keep alive a classroom while the campus is witnessing operations and constructions.