TIME Nyack General Manager on Challenges within a Competitive Local Market

STORY AND PHOTO BY JANIE ROSMAN

Sitting at the Art Café in Nyack earlier this week, Christopher Costabile spoke enthusiastically about the new property.

“It’s exciting, it’s a new hotel, an upscale hotel,” Costabile, recently hired to manage TIME Nyack, said. “It’s considered lifestyle because it typically doesn’t fall into the category of a Marriott, and there’s not one of the same.”

The Nyack resident and West Harrison (Westchester) native knows the industry.

“I’ve been in the hotel business for 25 years and opened the Cambria hotel in White Plains last year,” he said, crediting his experience with the food and beverage industry as assets to his new job. He holds a degree in culinary arts from SUNY Cobleskill and a degree in hotel and restaurant management from RIT in Rochester.

Costabile said the new property is being billed as “an alternative to the “typical branded hotel with upscale offerings I don’t think you’ll find at other hotels in this area. You’ll feel like you’re in a New York City hotel.”

“We want it to be a destination on the weekend,” Costabile said. “With hotels, the object is (to fill rooms) seven days a week so you have to find where is your business going to be for seven days.”

TIME Nyack features 3,500 square feet of meeting and event space and meeting facilities with a 250-peron capacity. It is in the process of obtaining a liquor license.

From Monday to Friday WY Group aims to appeal to corporations and wants its business travelers to Rockland, Bergen and Orange Counties to stay there. Using the area’s four airports — Westchester County, Stewart, LaGuardia and JFK — as coordinates, Costabile said the hotel is convenient to local attractions.

It seems now that you want to attract the city crowd.

“Yes, on the weekends,” he said. “The challenge is going to be (attracting people) who are not corporate and business travelers Monday to Thursday, and on the weekend you’ll have weekend travelers.” The goal is to garner business travelers who stay at Marriott, the DoubleTree (by Hilton) and Holiday Inn hotels.

What would entice them to stay here rather than at a branded hotel?

“Some guests would want a unique offering at an upscale hotel where the food and beverage bars and restaurant, more meeting space,” he said. Some people in Nyack wouldn’t want the typical, branded cookie-cutter hotel.”

TIME Nyack will provide a shuttle for business guests who are in town for training at their companies’ local offices, for example Siemens (Healthcare Diagnostics Inc.) in Tarrytown. “We’ll take you to work (within a radius of five miles), we’ll take you to work in the morning and bring you back to our hotel at the end of the day,” he said.