The Aloha Motel – named after the Hawaiian word meaning both “hello” and “goodbye” – reopened after extensive renovations on N. Arizona Avenue and W. Chandler Blvd in downtown Chandler.
Owners John Hylton and Bill Simmonds call their renovated 26-room mid-century building a “vacation boutique.”
“It’s a destination,” Simmonds said. “Our price is competitive with other hotels. We want to continue the story. We’re already 40 to 50 years back and here we are, continuing a new story.
Motel rooms can be reserved online or through Airbnb, but are not available without an appointment.
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Chandler is a great place to invest
Hylton and Simmonds stumbled upon the Aloha Motel after moving from Washington to Chandler.
Pilots by trade, the couple had also worked together on several real estate investments in single-family and multi-family homes in the North West.
When they arrived in Arizona, they felt Chandler was the perfect town to start investing in, Simmonds said.
“When we left the Northwest, we liquidated most of our assets there and started investing in the Phoenix area and Aloha was the first step,” he said.
“Looking at the property, knowing downtown Chandler and looking at the numbers, we thought there was an opportunity here,” Hylton said. “We didn’t know what to turn it into. We kept learning more and more. It just kept evolving.
The men originally planned to create long-term apartment rentals in the Aloha building. COVID-19 has changed their plans – and the course of Aloha’s reinvention.
“It was a tough time to own apartments,” Hylton said. “People couldn’t pay rent. From our perspective, it made sense for people to stay in a short-term rental. Also, people wanted to travel. We saw people at our properties in Sedona wanting to go to the cabin with their family and self-isolate.”
The partners decided to turn the motel into an Airbnb-operated motel.
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This new style of hotel is contactless
At Aloha, people check into their own rooms, Hylton said, adding that this creates a fully self-contained motel model where each room is managed like an Airbnb.
Once people book their stay and arrive at Aloha, guests are given a room code to access their rooms.
While guests cannot enter the reception lobby to reserve a room, visitors can scan a QR code on the property’s front door to see available rooms for that night.
“They can book it on the spot and walk to their doorstep in five minutes,” Hylton said.
How the Aloha was transformed
In 2019, the motel looked like an abandoned building, Hylton said. They began renovations that year and removed all flooring, installed new ceilings, and installed completely new electrical and plumbing systems.
“It was due to the cleats,” Hylton said.
All 26 rooms have been redesigned and feature vintage photos of Volkswagen vans by local artist Randy Slack and neon lights that match the color of the door, each one being different. A ukulele hangs in each room that anyone can remove from the wall to play and each room has kitchenettes that were included in the motel’s original design in the 1960s, according to creative consultant Tara Langston, who also installed an Instagram-friendly wooden tiki wall by the pool.
The original four colorful tikis have been removed from the front of the motel and replaced with a clean white wall topped with a blue Hawaiian flower and painted with the name of the motel and the words “hello” and “goodbye” painted with each side of the building.
“Aloha is a two-way word,” Langston said. It means ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’, so I had this idea of bracketing a period of time between saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ and saying ‘this is when you’re here and not in ordinary life”. .'”
The Aloha Motel
Details: The Aloha Motel, 445 N. Arizona Ave., Chandler. alohaarizona.com/, instagram.com/thealohaarizona.
Contact the reporter at [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @sofia.krusmark
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