Residence Inn by Marriott Melville opens; Long Island needs more new hotels, co-owner says

The nearly $50 million Residence Inn by Marriott Melville recently opened after four years in the making, just in time for the Ryder Cup that drew about 250,000 attendees a few miles away.

The 103,555-square-foot hotel was bustling due to the golf tournament at Bethpage State Park last month, which was partly a testament to the appeal of the hotel, co-owner and hotel developer George Tsunis said.

“We knocked down an old, abandoned building and built [in its place] what I think is a gorgeous hotel,” he said.

The busyness of the hotel is indicative of the strong need on Long Island for larger and newer hotels to fill in gaps in the number of suitable rooms, which send visitors to New York City for hotel stays when big events are on the Island, he said.

Long Island is “not under-hoteled. It’s under-demolished," Tsunis said. "There are plenty of hotel rooms on Long Island. There just aren’t plenty of hotel rooms that most people would want to stay at.”

The area's hotel market is strong, but it needs more new hotels to replace outdated properties, he said.

The Island also could benefit from having a convention center, which would draw more corporate businesses to the area, boosting hotel stays from business travel, said Dorothy Roberts, president of the Long Island Hospitality Association, an East Northport-based trade group of hotels, catering halls, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses.

Efforts to build a convention center on Long Island have stalled for years.

The new hotel

Located at 500 Broadhollow Rd., which is part of the state Route 110 business corridor, the Residence Inn by Marriott Melville is a four-story building that has 143 suites for short-term and extended stays. The hotel is on a 3-acre site directly off Exit 49S of the Long Island Expressway.

The hotel includes Gbar & Bistro, which serves American cuisine and cocktails, as well as an indoor pool, fitness center and 1,160 square feet of flexible meeting space.

Construction on the hotel began in summer 2024.

The hotel opened on Aug. 28 and began taking online reservations in mid-September, a week before the Ryder Cup, which was held on Sept. 26-28.

Aside from the international draw of that sporting event, the Residence Inn is performing well on Long Island, Tsunis said.

"You have a ramp-up and the ramp-up is a little skewed because of the Ryder Cup. ... But let's just say that it's performing at or above expectations," he said.

More rooms in the pipeline

From 2015 to August 2025, the number of hotels on Long Island grew by 25%, from 207 to 258 properties, and the number of hotel rooms increased by 16%, from 15,221 to 17,625, according to CoStar, a commercial real estate data company based in Arlington, Virginia.

Long Island has a stable hotel market with year-over-year increases in the average daily rate to rent rooms, Roberts said.

The region’s average hotel occupancy rate is higher than the national average.

Long Island’s hotel average occupancy rate from January to August this year was 72.6%, up 0.8% from the same eight-month period in 2024, according to CoStar, whose hotel data is mostly focused on chains.

Nationally, the hotel average occupancy rate from January to August this year was 63.4%, down 0.8% from the same period in 2024, according to CoStar.

New York City's average occupancy rate from January to August was 82.3%, which was the highest among CoStar's 172 defined markets in the nation, but the rate declined slightly, by 0.1%, from the same period last year.

Long Island, however, could benefit from having a convention center, which would increase the demand for large hotels, particularly higher-end properties, said Roberts, who also is vice president of operations and development for Oxford Hospitality USA, a Jericho-based hotel developer.

There are 10 hotels and 1,336 rooms in the pipeline for Long Island, according to CoStar.

One of the planned projects is the $76 million AC by Marriott, a 170-room building that will be constructed at Roosevelt Field in Uniondale, possibly as soon as late 2027, Roberts said.

Also planned is an upscale hotel in Jericho Plaza that will cost an estimated $85 million to $95 million to build and will be named either an Autograph by Marriott or Curio by Hilton.

Oxford is the lead in a partnership that is developing the 182-room, 113,800-square-foot hotel, the construction for which should be done by early 2028, Roberts said.

A five-story, 96-room Tempo by Hilton, a $35 million luxury hotel-apartment project, will be built in Patchogue by 2027.

Rising cost to build

The Residence Inn by Marriott Melville was built by Broad Hollow Road Hotel LLC, with the majority owner being real estate firm Giaquinto Management LLC.

Other owners include Garone Management and Tsunis, who is the CEO of Chartwell Hotels, the management company for the Residence Inn.

Plans to build the hotel were submitted to the Town of Huntington for approval in 2021.

In 2022, the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency awarded $4 million in tax breaks for the planned hotel project, which was then estimated to cost $39.4 million. At that point, Rosario C. Cassata, who constructs and owns apartment buildings, was the majority owner of the project.

Last year, under the new ownership mix, the project was approved for $800,000 in additional incentives by the IDA because the projected construction costs for the hotel rose to $49.6 million.

The projected cost was higher because of rising expenses for unionized construction workers and building materials, as well as higher interest rates, Lou Giaquinto, owner of Giaquinto Management, told the IDA, Newsday previously reported.

With the incentives, the developers will save $2.4 million, or 37.5%, on property taxes over 15 years, and will be exempt from up to $2.1 million in sales taxes on the purchase of construction materials, equipment and furnishings.

The hotel’s final price tag was $48 million, Tsunis said Wednesday.