Drury Hotels is building its first Tampa Bay metro property at 802 South Falkenburg Road, an eight-story, 210-room hotel that the Missouri-based chain is targeting for a fall 2026 opening. The family-owned operator announced the project on September 25, 2025, and online booking for the property is set to open on the chain's booking site on June 11, 2026.
The hotel sits at the intersection of Falkenburg Road and State Road 60, one block east of Interstate 75 and a short drive from the Brandon Exchange shopping district. The 140-store mall, formerly Westfield Brandon, was bought by North American Development Group from Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield for $220 million in 2023 and rebranded in May 2024. The Drury parcel previously held a big-box retail tenant. Vertical construction is underway using post-tension concrete, the same method Drury has standardized on its newer Florida builds.
Brandon is the largest unincorporated census-designated place in Hillsborough County and the suburban anchor of the I-75 corridor east of Tampa. The Falkenburg site sits about eighteen miles east of Tampa International Airport and roughly twenty minutes from downtown Tampa via the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, the toll connector that links eastern Hillsborough to the Tampa waterfront.
Drury Plaza Tampa Brandon will be the company's sixth Florida hotel and its third opening in the state in four calendar years, after the 2022 Drury Plaza Hotel Orlando – Disney Springs Area and the 2024 Drury Plaza Hotel Tallahassee. It is the first Drury property anywhere in the Tampa Bay metro. "We look forward to welcoming guests to our first hotel in the Tampa Bay Area," said Chuck Drury, the company's chief executive, in the September 25 announcement.
The amenity stack and the meeting block
The Brandon hotel carries Drury's full signature amenity stack. Guests receive a complimentary hot breakfast each morning and a 5:30 Kickback evening reception that includes hot food, beer, wine, mixed drinks, and soft drinks; the included-beverage close has been one of the chain's longest-standing differentiators against limited-service competitors. A 24-hour fitness and business center, an outdoor pool and spa, free on-site parking, a lobby Guest Market, and a Kitchen + Bar with late-night service round out the public spaces. Wi-Fi is free throughout the building.
The 2,500-square-foot meeting block is the strategic note for a Plaza of this size on the I-75 corridor. The space accommodates up to 300 attendees, includes free Wi-Fi for all attendees with no food and beverage minimums, and allows organizers to apply a portion of any cancellation fee toward a future booking at another Drury property. That is corporate-and-association group business, the segment that historically routes to downtown Tampa or Westshore but increasingly considers I-75 suburbs for cost and parking reasons.
Drury Plaza Tampa Brandon is expected to employ approximately 65 full-time and part-time staff at opening, with hiring underway through construction.
A family-owned chain at 150 hotels
Drury Hotels was founded in 1973 by the Drury family and remains owned and operated from the company's St. Louis headquarters. The portfolio sits at more than 150 hotels across 30 states, weighted toward upper-midscale Plaza, Inn & Suites, and Inn formats with a service template the chain runs without franchising. The Drury family-run model is unusual at scale: the chain is one of the largest U.S. hotel groups that has never licensed franchise development of its brand, and the family has historically cited that structure as the reason in-room service standards and amenity stack stay uniform across the portfolio.
That consistency shows up at J.D. Power's North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study: Drury has won the ranking for 19 consecutive years, and in 2025 swept all seven study dimensions in its first year as an Upscale-segment entrant. Florida is one of the chain's faster-growing geographies. The Tallahassee Plaza opened in 2024 after the Orlando Disney Springs Plaza in 2022, and Tampa Brandon makes a third Florida ribbon-cutting in four calendar years.
Online booking opens at druryhotels.com on June 11, 2026, for fall 2026 stays.
