A Yonkers hotel shows its independent streak
The Royal Regency Hotel is a family-owned boutique hotel located at 165 Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers that has withstood the Covid-19 pandemic and maintains open doors for potential guests as summer approaches. The hotel opened in 1994, two years after the building was purchased from the estate sale of Tom Carvel, whose soft-serve ice cream company called Yonkers home. At one time, the building was Carvel”™s corporate office and training center.
Co-owner Maria Paxos-Pampafikos identified the hotel”™s independence as key to its success and identity.
“We are not affiliated with any brand or flag; we are truly independent,” Paxos-Pampafikos said. “We really don”™t subscribe to any of those sort of cookie-cutter requirements that the flags sort of hand down. We”™re able to be nimble and really respond to the preferences and good, bad or otherwise commentary from our guests, and we can really pivot and shift the service offerings when appropriate in response to that in a much more quick manner.”
Paxos-Pampafikos said that her family views being in the hospitality business as an opportunity to be hospitable toward guests.
“We are a community business, we”™re a family-owned and -operated business,” Paxos-Pampafikos stated. “Our success depends very much on being good members of the community.”
She said that when the pandemic hit, it wasn”™t too much of a leap from their normal cleaning and sanitation practices to meeting the special demands posed by Covid.
“The hotel environment, in general, has always been one where health and safety are at the forefront just by virtue of the nature of the business,” Paxos-Pampafikos said. “We need to feel comfortable staying at our own property before we can expect anyone else to feel comfortable there.”
With the severity of the pandemic seemingly diminished, the family-run hotel has seen people again becoming enthusiastic about travel.
“People recognize that this is an endemic situation and that we will be living with it for the foreseeable future, just like any other virus,” Paxos-Pampafikos said. “The majority of people feel comfortable enough to start getting back to living.”
The pandemic affected the hotel”™s ability to retain some workers, especially at the front desk, which saw more turnover than some other staff positions.
“We have quite a number of staff members who made it through the entirety of Covid with us,” Paxos-Pampafikos said. “We probably fared better than most in our ability to retain our staff.”
Paxos-Pampafikos noted current occupancy rates are “much closer” to pre-pandemic levels. She also said that rooms designed by the Virserius Studios remain popular. The architecture and design firm has designed hotel rooms at facilities such as the Hotel Berlin in Germany, Hyatt Regency Montreal and Marriott Charles de Gaulle in Paris. The Royal Regency also has a restaurant and bar called Venue and a little more than 14,000 square feet of banquet and event space.