Jul. 12--The Crowne Plaza hotel on the West Loop will be renamed Inter-Continental Houston after an extensive renovation and the construction of an adjacent building for ballrooms and meeting space. 

The hotel will be closed for a couple of months this winter while work is completed. The scope of the renovation will include new flooring, wallcoverings, windows and furnishings -- a thorough gutting of the building. 

"Everything you touch or see will be different," said Pam Gilbert, regional director of sales and marketing for London-based Bass Hotels and Resorts. 

The changes will include new windows designed to insulate guests from the roar of the freeway outside. 

The hotel, in the 2200 block of West Loop South between Westheimer and San Felipe, also will be given add a few more guest rooms, upping raising its total from 476 rooms to 485 rooms. 

Bass Hotels also bought a two-acre used as parking lot. A 48,000-square-foot Inter-Continental convention center, including a 13,000-square-foot ballroom and a variety of smaller meeting rooms, is being built there. 

The new convention building will provide one of the largest blocks of hotel meeting space in Houston, Gilbert said. 

The hotel also will be able to command higher room rates, placing making it as a player in a market with the the prominent hotels in the Galleria area, Gilbert said. The Inter-Continental's nightly rates will fluctuate in the $150 range. 

"We'll be competing with the J.W. Marriott, the Westin, the Houstonian and the Omni in the Galleria area," Gilbert said. 

Galleria-area hotel room rates have been increasing. Through May, the year-to-date average daily rate in the Galleria area was $134 per night, up from $124 per night in the comparable period of last year, according to PKF Consulting. 

The Galleria area has some of the city's highest room rates. The Galleria attracts a large number of tourists from foreign countries. The Inter-Continental brand is a good fit for the hotel because the brand is recognizable to foreigners, Gilbert said. 

Bass Hotels operates 134 Inter-Continental brand hotels worldwide. Inter-Continental is the most expensive brand in the Bass empire, which has more than 3,000 hotels in 100 countries around the world. 

Bass is not the only hotel operator undertaking a major hotel renovation in the Galleria area. 

The former Red Lion Hotel, 2525 West Loop South, is being renovated and given a contemporary look that will transform it into a so-called boutique hotel. The Red Lion will be renamed the Hotel Derek. 

The 312-room Hotel Derek is being developed by Amerimar Enterprises of Philadelphia. 

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