Holiday Inn Brand Returning To Toms River Hotel?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated, 1:30 p.m., with comment from Driftwood representatives:

The Toms River Hotel will be carrying a brand name again, but what that name will be is as yet undecided, according to representatives of Driftwood Hospitality Management.

While a resolution on the agenda for Tuesday night’s Toms River Township Council meeting seeks the town’s approval to transfer the liquor license from TR Liquor LLC, which had been the operating the license at the hotel, to Driftwood Special Servicing ”D/B/A Holiday Inn of Toms River LLC,” representatives of the parent company said Tuesday afternoon that branding it as a Holiday Inn is “not a done deal.”

“We do not have a signed contract,” one representative said. Discussions are continuing and an analysis is being conducted to determine the best option for the site, with both InterContinental Hotels, the parent group of Holiday Inn, and Hilton, the parent of Doubletree, as possibilities, the representative said.

The hotel at the corner of Route 37 and Clifton Avenue has been in receivership and the liquor license transfer is part of the process to get it rebranded, representatives said.

Ownership of the property has finally been formally transferred to Driftwood, and transferring the liquor license is the next step. they said. It follows a December vote by the council to allow the liquor license to remain active while the property transfer was completed.

In December, Robert Spitzer, attorney for David Buddemeyer, president of Driftwood Hospitality Management, told the council that negotiations were in the works to return a brand name to the Toms River Hotel; Holiday Inn and Doubletree both were mentioned.

The hotel, which has been in the township since 1978, has been operating as the Toms River Hotel since November 2013, when Holiday Inn pulled its branding.

Age had caught up with the 170-plus room hotel and complaints and negative reviews on travel sites began to rise. It also was the site of a heroin bust in 2011, that netted $7,000 in cash, drugs and processing materials, adding to negative perceptions of the hotel.

At the December meeting, Councilman Brian Kubiel had asked when a brand name might return to the hotel, as residents expressed concerns that retaining the Toms River Hotel name would continue to make it a magnet for drug trafficking.

Alan Filer, general manager for Driftwood, told the council that he is taking steps to address the issues that resulted in those problems previously. And reviews of the hotel on internet travel sites -- which Filer and the staff check and respond to regularly -- have improved significantly.

Nora Minichino, corporate communications manager, said by email Tuesday, “The team at the property has worked very hard to over the past four years to remove this stigma from their image. I would like to point out that the property is the No. 1 hotel on TripAdvisor in the Toms River area and has received rave reviews as one of the premier wedding locations in the community.”

Spitzer in December estimated the hotel would need between $3 million and $5 million in renovations that would begin as soon as the branding was secured, with an eye to reopening the hotel under the brand name in the fall.