ATLANTA, Ga., May 13, 2002—InTown Suites, a leader in the economy extended-stay hotel segment, today announced that it will convert its recently acquired portfolio of 65 Suburban Lodge hotels to the InTown Suites brand by year’s end. The first 20 properties are expected to begin conversion this week.
InTown Suites acquired Suburban Lodges of America, Inc., effective May 1, 2002. The acquisition included 65 owned hotels, 62 franchised properties and the 73-hotel Guesthouse International, mid-market, limited-service hotel franchise organization. Shortly after acquiring the company, InTown spun off the two franchise operations.

“Our interest from the beginning was to acquire the real estate rather than the franchise organizations,” said David Vickers, president of InTown Suites. “Our business model has been to own and operate our hotels. Through these conversions, we more than doubled our size, achieved immediate critical mass of more than 100 hotels and became the nation’s largest economy extended-stay hotel brand. On a per-room basis, we paid approximately one third less to acquire the 65 properties than it would have cost us to build 65 new InTown Suites.”

“The Suburban Lodges we acquired are a good fit for us. Their average property size is a little larger than InTown Suites’ but their room size is slightly smaller. We are looking at the FF&E requirements and will be making some upgrades. When the conversion is complete, our guests will be unable to tell the difference between an acquired or original InTown Suites hotel.”
Vickers said that he expects no personnel changes at the property level for the converted hotels. “We will install our proprietary management and tracking systems, provide training and get out to meet our new property managers as quickly as possible,” he said.
“We will spend the next few weeks analyzing the properties and plan to announce our growth strategies within the next month,” he said. “Our initial InTown properties continue to perform at an exceptional level, with systemwide occupancy in April of 91 percent. Now that we have reached critical mass, we have the platform from which to accelerate our growth.”

Founded in 1989, InTown Suites is the largest economy-segment extended-stay brand. With the conversion of the former Suburban Lodge hotels to InTown Suites, the brand will have 118 properties with 15,400 rooms open in 21 states. InTown Suites is a privately held corporation based in Atlanta, Ga. Additional information about the company may be found at its Web site, www.intownsuites.com.

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