MACON, Ga. — Macon already has nearly 70 hotels, and they're about to get another one. This one will be off Arkwright Road.
Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning has approved plans for another hotel on Monday.
Valerie Bradley, vice president of marketing at Visit Macon, says the city has approximately 65 hotels and 5,200 rooms.
The new hotel will be four stories and have 92 rooms. It will be located right next to I-75 on River Place Drive.
Within a one-mile radius of the hotel's locations, there are 14 hotels, seven of them being on River Place Drive. This is not counting the one that might be moving in.
" Another one? I don't know if it will be a good place to put one if there's already seven here, but maybe on down the line a little ways," said Jodi Wolf who stopped in Macon to get some rest between her drive from Wisconsin to Florida.
On Tuesday, Wolf was checking out of one of those hotels on River Place Drive. She said it was pretty easy to find a hotel off of the interstate.
"There's a lot of hotels, but it's hard to find good, quality hotels," Wolf said.
Bradley says the visitor's center conducted a hotel feasibility study that showed downtown especially needs more hotels.
"There's definitely a need," Bradley said. "However, we will work tirelessly to promote those in other areas and all over our community."
She says the area needs hotels because more tourists are visiting.
"For the last couple of years, we've seen an increase in our direct tourism spending," Bradley said.
The spending directly benefits the city, she says.
"For every tourist that comes here, for the spending, our community families are able to save about $500," Bradley said. "For every dollar that's invested from tourism, we give about $54 back to our community."
Though downtown is the one in need, it seems more and more hotels are flocking to exits off of I-75 and I-16.
The owner, Dinesh Patel, says construction will start this week, and the project is expected to be done by March 2021. Patel says this is the prime location for hotels since it's right next to the interstate and near downtown.
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