HILLTOP INN UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP

Big transformations have been taking place at the former Hilltop Inn motel in Slayton since new owner Small Town Hospitality purchased the property on Monday, Dec. 4.

While it will take a little time for new signs to go up, its new name will be The Trail Inn — the fifth brand name property now owned by Small Town Hospitality out of northern Minnesota.

“It’s our ninth hotel (we’ve acquired) in five years,” one of the group’s owners said. “This is our passion business. Basically, we look for properties that are in smaller communities where we typically have an opportunity to improve them and to market them better. They have an upside to them, meaning that you can make a lot of positive change to increase the business and get more public demand.”

Renovations started immediately with the first impression areas, such as the lobby area and with the lighting, followed by things like bedding and toiletries. While about half the sheets are being replaced, there will be brand new blankets, comforters and pillows throughout the motel. The soap dispensers on the walls are also being discarded and replaced with upgraded, boutique-style Beekman soap, shampoo, conditioner and lotion, which the owner gets a lot of compliments on.

The Trail Inn includes 30 rooms. Since the rooms are quite original in nature, the owner said they have a phased-in approach, beginning with deep cleaning and then the lighting. New lamps are coming soon. All of the bulbs will be matching, warm light ones.

All of the rooms will also have convenient amenities such as Keurig machines for coffee and tea, as well as a microwave, refrigerator and television. The owner said the TVs will now be on Roku systems in which visitors can log onto their accounts for Netflix, Prime, Hulu or whatever but that there are also a bunch of free channels. New outlets for USB charging and cellphone charging were also added to all the rooms.

Since the motel is relatively busy, the new owner didn’t want to close it down in order to do renovations, especially since it’s the only one in town. Eventually, they’ll shut down five or six at a time and every room will get new carpet, new paint and new furniture as well. “We’ll fully flip it to a newer, modern room,” the owner said. “This was a good situation where it is relatively busy and it’s relatively well maintained. It’s just dated, so we’re able to work with it. We have one in Illinois we got last year and we had to shut it down.

We couldn’t rent it the way it was.”

Another change is that the motel will be utilizing a contactless system, which means there won’t be an individual waiting for you to check in, whenever that might be. Instead, there’ll be a system of boxes with a screen on them. Anyone who books a room will get a noon message, remotely from the central front desk, saying you can check in anytime after 3 p.m. and giving you a code. When you arrive at The Trail Inn in Slayton, you punch the code in and take your key when the little door opens. “Then you don’t really have to be at the mercy of whether the owner is awake or around,” the owner said. “You just come and go. We do that at all nine properties. Sometimes, the older generation misses the interaction a little bit, I think, but we have staff that is here during the day for cleaning.”

Not having a fulltime person at the front desk all day and all night allows Small Town Hospitality the opportunity to pass the savings on to If someone needs an extra towel, a space heater or roll of toilet paper, for example, he or she could contact the front desk, which would then advise the individual to go down to the courtesy cabinet and help yourself. The idea of having a fully stocked courtesy cabinet was created to go along with the contactless system. Of course, a good surveillance system helps keep people honest. In the case of an emergency, there is also an on-call system where a staff member — much like a keyholder for a store — can come down to the property to give assistance.

The owner explained that he always keeps an eye on the market, and when he spotted the Hilltop Inn up for sale, he made an appointment. He came and stayed the night at the motel. The next day, he met with the realtor, did a tour, decided to make an offer and started going through the acquisition process.

The previous owner had the motel for about 21 years. It was built in 1970. “It’s a very typical situation where when we take over these type of places, it’s a lot of workers, utility workers, trades people, hunters, fishermen and so on, but what tends to happen, as we make the improvements, we stay in line with what they need as far as pricing and convenience and so on, but we upgrade the experience enough that you get hockey parents and other sports parents, people going to the lake because it’s advertised more as well and they never knew it was here,” the owner said.

Small Town Hospitality plans to advertise The Trail Inn on Expedia and Booking.com, which will be something new. The owner said there wasn’t a single hotel/motel that came up for Slayton or even in the area when you went to Expedia. That needed to change, he said, so more people know about the upgraded motel with “very affordable rooms.”

The hope is that curb appeal draws in some customers as well. On the first day of ownership, the whole front area was cleaned out. Old patio furniture and buckets of cigarettes were removed. New floor mats, carpet and smoker poles were installed. New lights were also strung across the length of the building.

One of the biggest reasons they are able to make so much progress in less than two weeks is because they previously developed their own chain (The Trail Inn), so instead of trying to create something totally unique, they can get busy ordering the same type of carpet, flooring and paint as they’ve installed at similar motels they own. The branding and telephone systems are also inline with each other, so it saves time and money. Eventually, the Slayton location will be added to the website at www.thetrailinn.com.

All new commercial levers will be installed on the doors. The previous ones reportedly caused a lot of lock outs. The new one allows people to leave their room unlocked to go to their car or something. Fast internet is another amenity at The Trail Inn. The owner said Starlink is satellite Wi-Fi, so it’s very, very fast. Two things that will no longer exist, however, are telephones and alarm clocks, both dust collectors these days. “We’ve learned our lessons over the years, where not to waste money,” the owner said.

Once it warms up, the sign will be painted and redone to say, “The Trail Inn.” The telephone system will soon switch from an automated system that still mentions the Hilltop Inn to one that thanks you for calling The Trail Inn. And eventually, people will be able to book rooms online. The owner said that was never available before. When it’s activated, individuals can book a room over the phone anytime between 8 a.m. and midnight.