Canopy: The Latest Hotel Brand To Pitch The Dallas Experience

Canopy by Hilton is the latest in a series of new boutique hotels intending to make a mark in Dallas hospitality.

Some of the newest hotel brands in the industry are going in and around Downtown Dallas, including the 150-room Uptown Canopy, which opened this week at a price point around $180 per night, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Canopy, like Marriott's Aloft, is aimed at the traveling millennial who wants the hotel to be an experience as well as a bed for the night. On its own website, Canopy Uptown touts Uptown's shops and nightlife, concert venues and trails before it mentions its room amenities.

While cities like Austin are adding rooms at a swift pace, the tone and tenor of the Dallas hotel market near the city's core is one that focuses on new branded experiences: Virgin Dallas Hotel in the Design District; Hall Arts Hotel & Residences in the Arts District; Kimpton's management of The Epic's hotel in Deep Ellum; and even The Drever project downtown.

"Downtown has gone through a renaissance. It's a totally different place than it was 10 years ago," Foley Gardere hotelier attorney Cliff Risman said. "We have new office buildings, new residential parks and now new cutting-edge hotels. It all fits together."

Dallas is the third-busiest market for hotel development in the country, Risman said. More than 5,300 hotel rooms are under construction, according to CoStar. But don't expect hotel activity to continue forever, Risman said.

"All the companies have come up with new brands and some of those brands are indistinguishable from the old brands. But, you know, they continue trying to slice and dice the market more and differently," Risman said. "At some point, this will all slow down."