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Ramada Whitehorse switches hands

The downtown hotel will officially become a Days Inn in a few weeks, as soon as the new sign arrives, said Michael Rapps, chairman of Holloway Lodging, the company that bought the property.
ramada

The Ramada Whitehorse hotel was sold Friday for $8.2 million.

The downtown hotel will officially become a Days Inn in a few weeks, as soon as the new sign arrives, said Michael Rapps, chairman of Holloway Lodging, the company that bought the property.

“We like the size of market, we like the product and we like the price,” Rapps said.

Holloway Lodging is adding the Whitehorse hotel to the 35 hotels it owns. Its properties are mostly found across Canada, with one in South Carolina.

“We’re used to markets out west and up north,” Rapps said.

“We have two properties in Yellowknife. We’ve got properties along the Alaska Highway in Fort St. John and in Fort Nelson. So this was really a logical extension of that strategy.”

In the Northwest Territories the hotel group owns the Super 8 Yellowknife and the Yellowknife Inn.

Hotels under both the Days Inn and Ramada brand are independently owned and operated.

The hotel’s previous owner could not be reached in time for today’s deadline.

Rapps says his company has no plans to lay off employees. Renovations are planned for sometime after the busy summer season, he said.

That will include updates to the rooms and installing air conditioning for the entire building. Right now only about a third of the rooms are air conditioned, he said.

“It’ll take us a bit of time to get in there, identify exactly what it is we want to do and place orders for things. But we’re not going to displace any of our summer business.”

The hotel, formerly the Klondike Inn, was purchased from Westmark and turned into a Ramada in 2012.

When Westmark owned it, the hotel was only operated seasonally. After it was sold, the new owners kept it open all year.

Rapps said his company plans on continuing the year-round operations.

Contact Ashley Joannou at ashleyj@yukon-news.com