Travel centers are important not just because of the enormous forecourt space for trucks to park and fill up on fuel, but also because of the vast array of amenities these businesses offer inside the convenience store.
Most travel center chains offer a combination of showers, laundry services, driver lounges, restaurants and even barber shops in addition to several other services. With professional truckers and ambitious road trippers often driving through the wee hours, it stands to reason that some travel centers would also offer a cozy place to sleep.
That’s the mindset for the leadership team at Onvo, which operates 40 travel stops and gas stations across Pennsylvania and New York.
The Mountain Top, Pennsylvania-based company has six hotels in its network, and is currently building one that will operate adjacent to its brand-new travel center — and largest location to-date — in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
The hotel, a TownPlace Suites by Marriott, will be the first ground-up hotel Onvo has built adjacent to one of its travel centers, Harman Aulakh, the company’s vice president of marketing, said in an interview. Onvo expects the hotel to open towards the end of 2025.
The Pottsville hotel will be an “all-suite extended stay,” meaning every room will have a kitchen and dishwasher. Additionally, the hotel will offer laundry services, an indoor pool and a fitness center, said Aulakh, who added that it will be a “more premium offering” than the other hotels adjacent to Onvo travel centers.
“It’s definitely going to be kind of a new chapter in our travel center hotel development,” Aulakh said.
How hotels became hot property
Onvo opened its first hotel, a Holiday Inn Express, in Gibson, Pennsylvania in 2005. Today, it owns six hotels across central and eastern Pennsylvania under several brands, including Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge.
Four of these locations are standalone properties located near or across the street from an Onvo travel center, while two of them — the Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge — are adjacent to an Onvo, Aulakh said.
Building its first site-adjacent hotel from the ground up offers several benefits. Onvo won’t be inheriting any problems from the existing hotels, whether that’s building or maintenance quirks or challenges within the previous owners’ customer base.
“Whenever you're acquiring a property, there's challenges that you kind of accept with facilities that have already been being run,” Aulakh said. “But I think this one's definitely going to be different for us.”
For Onvo, hotels are an opportunity for the travel center chain to not only serve professional truck drivers, but also families and “business travelers” driving along the interstate, Aulakh said. In other words, both short-term visitors and anyone who may need to stay in an area for an extended period of time, he noted.
“We're serving three distinct groups of individuals with this property,” he said.
Onvo isn’t the only travel center chain in the U.S. that has hotels in its network, but it might be one of the few that’s still investing in them.
Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores has operated hotels since 2014, but earlier this summer the company decided to sell those 19 properties to focus on its core operations of c-stores, restaurants and truck care solutions, a company spokesperson said in a statement to C-Store Dive. According to its website, some of Love’s hotel brands have included Best Western Plus, Sleep Inn & Suites and Hampton Inn & Suites.
To date, Love’s has sold 14 of its hotels. Four of the remaining five are under contract, and Love’s expects to be out of the hotel business in the first quarter of 2025, the spokesperson said.
“There's so many different hotels and so many different offerings that not every brand or every type of hotel is going to fit with each development.”
Harman Aulakh
Vice president of marketing for Onvo
Meanwhile, TraveCenters of America at one point operated a number of its own “TA Motel” locations that operated adjacent to its travel centers. However, TA doesn’t consider hotels and motels a core part of its strategy, and it won’t be adding any in the future, a spokesperson from parent company BP said in a statement to C-Store Dive.
All but one TA Motel locations in the U.S. have been sold, the spokesperson added.
Getting started and finding the right partners
The most important thing travel center companies need to consider before dipping their toes into hotels is who their brand and development partners are going to be, Aulakh said.
“There's so many different hotels and so many different offerings that not every brand or every type of hotel is going to fit with each development,” he said.
Onvo works with five different hotel brands for its six existing locations. On the development side of its newest site in Pottsville, the company receives support from the Schuylkill Economic Development Corporation, which assists companies with planning and site assessment requirements in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania area.
Onvo has had a busy 2024. Besides opening its largest location yet and developing the latest hotel, the company launched its inaugural hot foods and private label fuels programs and opened its first branded gas station.
As the company continues to expand its capabilities, it’s keen on developing more hotels, Aulakh said.
“It's definitely something we're always looking at,” he said.
