Nome Hotel targets business traveler.

• Author: Gillespie, Mark
• Position: Alaska

Hotels for the business traveler are popping up all over the state. Even in Nome - a small town snuggled against the Arctic's Bering Sea.

Bering Straits Development Co., the commercial arm of the Bering Straits Native Corp., joins other Native-owned corporations with a new entry into the hotel business.

The company has experience in both the short-term and long-term real estate markets. It owns the largest mobile home park in Valdez with 200 spaces, and in Nome operates 30 long-term apartments, 12 apartment-style executive suites, and a three-story office building on Front Street.

According to vice-president Wally Powers, demand at the company's Aurora Executive Suites, opened in Nome in 1995, was taxing staff at Bering Straits Native Corp. headquarters, where front desk employees were doing double duty renting rooms and automobiles. After business hours, it was often Powers himself who had to leave the dinner table to check in unexpected guests.

It was these growing complications, plus an apparent growth in demand for short-term housing, which led the company's board of directors in February to approve construction of the 23-room Aurora Inn.

Once built, the hotel will be staffed 24-hours-a-day, serving guests and renting automobiles through the company's subsidiary Stampede Ventures.

"Aurora Inn is a dedicated facility aimed at attracting visitors to Nome. There is no retreat. Once it's built, it can't be converted into anything else," said Powers.

Aurora Inn will be the second full-service hotel in Nome. Before its decision to build the new hotel, BSDC was in negotiation to buy the 47-room Nugget Inn, owned by local businessman Wiley Scott. But Scott also owns a tour company that provides package tours to Alaska Airlines customers, a keystone to the Nagger Inn's success. He offered BSDC his two businesses as a package, but the two sides did not arrive at a satisfactory deal.

The new Aurora Inn will not compete directly with the fast-paced turnover of rooms at the Nugget Inn. It will instead fill a different niche, says Powers. "The rooms will have more amenities to attract the...