Prince George’s County has approved plans for a Marriott Residence Inn across from the College Park Metro station, at the intersection of Campus Drive and River Road, but it’s unclear when construction will begin.
The $45 million hotel would have 161 rooms and 6,800 square feet of retail on the ground floor, joining a recent boom in hotels along the Route 1 corridor.
But the coronavirus pandemic and the economic downturn has put a damper on the travel industry, and even those who are traveling are opting more for short-term rentals and Airbnbs than traditional hotels.
As a result, Marriott announced earlier this month that it would lay off 673 workers from its headquarters in Bethesda, and the company’s CEO said it doesn’t expect business to return to pre-Covid numbers for three years.
Before the pandemic, the hotel’s developers, Republican Properties Corp., planned to start construction in 2020 and finish in mid-2022. But a representative for the developers told the Washington Business Journal that he wasn’t sure if Marriott would approve that.
