Sep. 25--FORT WORTH, Texas--In a week, Fort Worth's newest full-service hotel, the Westin Beechwood, will debut. 

But the Denton County resort opens in a time of uncertainty as business travel declines in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 

The owners and managers of the 286-room property know they face challenges. The hotel market was soft even before the horror of Sept. 11. But they are confident that a new full-service property, the only one of its kind locally, will weather any instability the market may throw its way. 

"We have certain advantages that we're going to try to push," says David Farmer, chief financial officer of Beechwood Co. "The key word is flexibility. We will adjust." 

Farmer, general manager Drew McQuade and sales director Paul Chaston tout the 18-hole golf course designed by professional Greg Norman. They tout an 18,000-square-foot conference center. They tout a 9,000-square-foot ballroom. They tout the isolation of their location in the far northern edge of Fort Worth, across from Texas Motor Speedway. 

"What we have out here hasn't existed," McQuade says. "People aren't being bombarded by a whole lot of full-service hotels." 

But travel dollars are becoming limited. So even if full-service hotel properties are scarce, the people looking for that kind of property may be even more scarce, says Todd Walker of the hospitality consulting firm Source Strategies. 

"Full-service hotels were not being treated well in the economy before people stopped traveling," Walker says. "People are really trading down to get more economical rooms and amenities for their dollar." 

Few full-service hotels have been built in the past several years. The emphasis has been on limited-service hotels and motels with few amenities. When projects limit amenities such as restaurants, room service and workout rooms, they can see a bigger return on their investment. 

But Farmer says they have meetings and shows booked for the Westin, and no one has canceled in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies. Still, he says, there is a lot of uncertainty in the travel industry, and it will take some time to see how that affects the new hotel. 

The hotel is part of a much larger project being developed by Beechwood. It and the golf course are just two pieces of the 902-acre Beechwood Business Park. 

If the business park takes off, the hotel will be well-positioned to take advantage of the business generated by the companies there. It is already trying to capitalize on business from the companies in the Alliance development, just south of the Beechwood project. Still, its managers don't want to rely on Ross Perot Jr. for business. 

Beechwood announced plans in June for 600,000 square feet of speculative office space. The company is designing six 4-story office buildings of 100,000 square feet each. Construction on the first of those buildings has been pushed back until the first quarter of 2002. The hope was to start building by the end of this year. 

"We're still optimistic that this thing will occur," Farmer says. "We're not going to come out of the ground with it unless we've got some level of preleasing done." 

Corporate tenants in the business park could go a long way toward helping to ensure the success of the hotel. Until then, sales manager Chaston is hustling to drum up business across the state. 

State associations and businesses will be a key market in light of heightened airport security and a perceived hesitance to travel. 

"This may be a two-sided equation," Farmer says. "The groups that we may have gone after in the past that were coming in from outside the state for business meetings, etc., they may decide now they want to stay closer to home. We could get more state business or local business from people that may have gone out of state. It's a sector of business we were going after aggressively." 

But it's not all business travel and meetings. The hotel is also going after some leisure travelers. It plans to take advantage of the huge crowds that come to Texas Motor Speedway for auto racing. It is working to develop overnight packages with some of the racing schools at the track. And there is also the golf course, which gives the hotel a chance to sell weekend golf and getaway packages. 

"I would anticipate those would be very popular," Farmer says. 

Still, the hotel will open in a very dicey market. Walker says there is plenty of land that would allow a competitor to come in with a smaller property that could charge lower rates and take business away from the Westin. But he says the hotel has the advantage of only 286 rooms, which he calls small for a Westin. 

"That market was saturated before they built that property," Walker says. "We've seen a really significant drop of people staying in luxury and upscale hotels. (I'm) not sure the market needs many more rooms like that." 

-----To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.startext.com 

(c) 2001, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. HOT,