The nearly 30-acre project, dubbed "Starboard," would include a walkway to the theme park, conference center, ballroom, parking garage, fitness center, restaurant and rooftop bar and terrace, among other amenities, as seen in the site renderings.
Photo: Orange County Development Review Committee
There are also renderings for a tropical-like space with a few pools and lounging areas.
Photo: Orange County Development Review Committee
Due to the hotel's location, some rooms might even have a view of the Mako and Kraken rollercoasters. The Starboard hotel project would mark the theme park's first hotel under the same name in Orlando. SeaWorld offers vacation packages for hotels near the theme park, but has not yet built lodging on its Orlando campus, like that of Walt Disney World or Universal Studios.
Photo: Orange County Development Review Committee
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment CEO Marc Swanson doubled down on the company's commitment to opening not just one hotel, but two, in the next few years on last month's earnings call. It remains unclear, however, which SeaWorld locations in the U.S. that would apply to.
"On the hotel front, we also continue to make progress on our plans. As we mentioned last quarter, we are refining our design, planning on our first hotels and we expect to begin opening in 2026. We identified two locations of the first two hotels and we'll be offering more details about these properties soon," Swanson said, adding that they plan to continue to open more hotels in the years following.
Photo: Orange County Development Review Committee
Swanson said SeaWorld has "significant excess land" that is "underutilized" across its campus. That's where the hotels come in. "We have a unique opportunity to build highly compelling hotels that will integrate with our parks, allow us to capture profits from our guests that are currently staying at other properties, increase length of stay at our properties, offer more compelling vacation packages, upsell and cross-sell guests, increase loyalty and generate an attractive (return on investment)," Swanson said.
Swanson also shared some insight on how SeaWorld plans to pay for these hotels.
"Well, cash is fungible. We have several options given the nature of these projects. We expect to finance these hotels with a combination of debt and cash from our balance sheet. Given our expected cost of capital and the expected return on the expected returns on these hotel projects, we expect it expect to generate north of 20% returns on equity for these projects," Swanson said. "These are highly compelling projects that are long overdue. Many of you are fully aware of the value these types of hotels provide to our peers in our various markets, including in Orlando.
"Very excited about the significant investments we are making and the many initiatives we have underway across our business that we expect will improve the guest experience, allow us to generate more revenue and make us more efficient and more profitable enterprise."
