Vacation rental management company AvantStay will make its first foray in the full-service hotel realm with The Gilmore, an AvantStay Hotel, which is expected to open in mid to late April in Nashville’s 12 South neighborhood.
Founded in 2017 as a short-term rental startup, the company set out to “take the hotel experience and bring it into the home,” said Sean Breuner, cofounder/CEO, AvantStay. “It’s everything that you love about a hotel—all of the amenities and service offerings—brought into a home experience.”
The company had already delved into the hotel industry with boutique properties of 20 or fewer units, but The Gilmore will be 99 units, ranging from studios to four-bedroom suites, something unique to the industry.
Sean Breuner, AvantStay
“Everything that we built at AvantStay has been about the group experience,” said Breuner. “We’ve built a lot of software to combine units, so part of our foray into a full-service offering is our ability to still maintain that group ethos but doing so in a hotel.”
The company is no stranger to Nashville—it manages several properties in the market—and The Gilmore, owned by M Cubed Developments, will be the first hotel in the neighborhood.
“12 South is one of the most up-and-coming, unique neighborhoods in Nashville,” Breuner noted. “It’s incredibly walkable, with amazing experiences, restaurants and shopping, and it is accessible to downtown Nashville.”
As with all AvantStay properties, The Gilmore will offer “a very elevated guest experience,” according to Breuner, with in-room food and beverage, an underground parking garage, a 24/7 staffed main lobby and options for contactless check-in and checkout. Three private event spaces will also be onsite: a courtyard, an open-air rooftop and a multipurpose room designed for corporate meetings or small gatherings.
The hotel will provide 24/7 concierge services onsite, which is something different from what the other hotels in the AvantStay portfolio offer.
“Guests of The Gilmore will have access to exclusive discounts from the concierge, whether that’s 10% off on shopping or a free margarita at bartaco right down the street,” said Breuner.
Dallas-headquartered Humphreys & Partners was tapped to spearhead the architecture of the newly constructed building, while Nashville-based Design Object is leading the interior design, which combines European leisure with Southern charm and the ease of a Mediterranean resort across the indoor and outdoor spaces, according to AvantStay.
The CEO said that the company has a number of investors who are country musicians, and some of them have bars, speakeasies and other venues in downtown Nashville. “The expectation is that we’re going to have some activations around those venues,” he added.
The Gilmore, an AvantStay Hotel, will feature units ranging from studios to four-bedroom suites
Breuner expects AvantStay to add more hotels to the portfolio, whether they be small boutique or full-service properties.
“I think any neighborhood that fits that group ethos of luxury, premium product that is highly differentiated will be a consideration,” he said. “We’re expecting to launch 22 five- bedroom units in a boutique-hotel setting in Nashville’s The Gulch neighborhood later this summer.”
The growth plan for the company is a mixture of 1,000 homes or hotel units per year, according to Breuner, who added that the focus will be on “our core urban demographics in the Southeast, South and West, including Austin, San Diego, Scottsdale, New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah. We’re also looking at a number of projects in South Florida in Fort Lauderdale and Miami.”
As for the future of AvantStay, the CEO said, “We want to build the largest luxury national brand for differentiated group hospitality stays. We’re going to continue to add significant supply that supports the way that people travel today which, we believe from a group perspective, are these larger-form-factor room configurations. One of our slogans has always been ‘hotel in a home,’ and, for this particular full-service hotel, you can flip it and say it’s a ‘home in a hotel.’”
