The public is invited to attend an open house and ribbon-cutting Thursday for the Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites on Highway 82 in Greenwood.
Chawla Enterprises operates the the 70-room, five-story hotel. Suresh Chawla, the company's treasurer, said about 100 people are expected to attend the opening.
Guests will be treated to breakfast at 8 a.m., featuring hot food items such as cheese omelets, pastries such as Holiday Inn's signature cinnamon rolls, cereals, coffee and juice, Chawla said. The ribbon-cutting is at 9 a.m.
The Holiday Inn is next to the Hampton Inn, also owned by the Chawlas. The Hampton was so regularly booked after its opening in March 2005, plans were immediately begun for the Holiday Inn, Chawla said. They broke ground in April 2006.
The Greenwood Hampton is currently the "highest revenue-producing hotel in our portfolio," Chawla said.
Both the Hampton and Holiday Inn target corporate travelers.
"Greenwood is a mecca for people who have business in the Delta. People tell me they love to stay in Greenwood because of the restaurants and shopping downtown," Chawla said.
"People ask us all the time, 'Can the Greenwood market support another hotel?' I always tell them there are a lot of motels but not a lot of 21st-century hotels in town.
These hotels feature elevators, business centers and interior corridors," he said.
The Holiday Inn features spacious suites with sofa seating, wet bars, 37-inch flat-screen TVs and DVD players in addition to the standard features of desks, ergonomic seating, microwaves, refrigerators, coffee makers, hair dryers, irons and ironing boards.
The entire facility is non-smoking, and there are two elevators.
A large portion of the hotel is already booked for the weekend, Chawla said. Due in part to the Greenwood Country Club Invitational golf tournament and a Broad Street School class reunion, he predicts it will be the biggest opening out of the Chawlas' 12 hotels.
The Chawlas have worked double time in the past four years. The family opened its first hotel, the Comfort Inn in Greenwood, in 1989. Since 2003, they have increased their Delta hotels from six to 12.
They are currently working on three projects in Greenville. Chawla Enterprises is renovating a Key West Inn, building a meeting room to seat 125 in the Comfort Inn, and constructing a 75-room Hampton Inn on Highway 1 near the town's movie theatre.
Chawla said for future development his father, company president Dr. V.K. Chawla, is considering tourist-related projects, such as stand-alone meeting spaces, water parks or top-tier hotels.
Chawla Enterprises already owns four acres adjacent to the Holiday Inn and Hampton Inn and six acres across from the Wal-Mart Supercenter that are available for such projects.
"He wants to make Greenwood a destination point for meetings, conventions and tourism," Chawla said.
