Aurora hotel named best in country in Expedia 2015 Insiders’ Select list

AURORA | An Aurora hotel is the best place in the country for weary travelers to rest their heads, according to users of Expedia.com.

Visitors to the marketing and travel website gave local hotel Woolley’s Classic Suites better reviews than any other lodging facility in the country in 2015, granting it a nearly perfect rating of 4.9 on a 5-point scale in the categories of cleanliness, staff service, comfort and hotel condition. That metric was the result of 834 positive reviews out of a total of 839 written on Expedia over the past year, according to Kari Obernesser, Denver market manager for Expedia.

The positive customer feedback resulted in Woolley’s being named to Expedia’s annual Insiders’ Select list, which ranks the best hotels around the globe. The Aurora establishment at 16450 E. 40th Cir. earned the ranking of Expedia’s fourth-best hotel in the world, beating out other outposts in Japan, Italy, Thailand and Belgium, according to user reviews. The hotel was the only American location to be named in the top 10. However, American lodges accounted for half of the 650 global hotels in the rankings, which is up from just 37 percent in 2014, according to a press release from Expedia.

“When someone succeeds as well as this project has succeeded…it’s an indicator of what the future is going to be in the city of Aurora,” said Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan during a reception at Woolley’s Aug. 12.

Started by former Arizona plumbing contractor Robert Woolley, the 191-suite Aurora location opened in May of last year. Woolley’s son, Robert Woolley II, told reporters that the idea to open the facility in Aurora came after he and his father had a subpar experience at a nearby hotel several years ago.

“I told him (Robert Woolley Sr.), ‘don’t you think the market is a little saturated?’” said Wooley II. “And he just said, ‘We can do it better.’”

The elder Woolley said he believes visitors to the hotel were willing to fill out the Expedia reviews because they were pleasantly surprised with the facility’s amenities.

“I believe they’re in shock after being nickel and dimed to death on the airline to get here from wherever they’re coming from,” Wooley Sr. said. “They’re in shock because we don’t do that here.”

Obernesser said the speed at which Woolley’s has grown to become a significant force in a market inundated with hotels — there are six competitors within a quarter mile of Woolley’s — surprised the Expedia executives who compiled the rankings.

“To not have the brand backing, to not have the name recognition and to be in Aurora and not Denver are all things kind of stacked against them,” she said. “And they just came out of the blue and won this award.”

Woolley’s is planning to break ground on a second, 250-room hotel beside Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport in Texas this fall.

The U.S. hotel industry raked in nearly $177 billion in revenue in 2014, according to statistics aggregator Statista.com.