The new pop-up will feature some 100 units at Camden Downtown located at 1515 Austin St.

HOUSTON—Pop-up retail has been fairly commonplace for a while now but a hospitality version has popped up in the form of WhyHotel. This alternative lodging service operates pop-up hotels in newly built luxury apartment buildings, taking advantage of the lease-up period when units often sit vacant.

“In the United States, at any point in time, there are hundreds of thousands of vacant, new-built apartments,” Jason Fudin, CEO and co-founder of WhyHotel, tells GlobeSt.com. “This is due to the units being delivered to market all at once, upon completion of the complex, since residents can't move into a building that's still under construction. It then takes about a year for a residential building to fill up. The WhyHotel model takes advantage of this underlying inefficiency, putting vacant apartments to work during the lease-up period.”

This week, WhyHotel announced plans to launch a new pop-up hotel in Houston, the company's first location outside of the East Coast. The pop-up will be launched in partnership with Camden Property Trust and is scheduled to begin accepting its first guests in late 2019, with the pop-up hotel running through late 2020.

The Houston pop-up will feature approximately 100 units at Camden Downtown, located at 1515 Austin St. in downtown. Camden's newest Houston development community, a 21-story 271-unit residential high-rise is located next to the Toyota Center and less than one mile from the George R. Brown Convention Center. It will offer residents and hotel guests a fitness center, bar and dining spaces, as well as common area lounges.

“Camden Downtown is perfectly situated in the heart of downtown Houston, so bringing early activation and energy to this project by partnering with WhyHotel is truly exciting,” said Laurie Baker, executive vice president of operations at Camden Property Trust. “Visitors to downtown Houston as well as prospective residents of Camden Downtown will have the opportunity to experience our new luxury community firsthand, and a WhyHotel partnership offers Camden a unique amenity for its residents as well as additional income for the property during its lease-up period.”

WhyHotel had a series of successful pop-up launches in 2018 with locations in Washington, DC, Baltimore and Virginia. This year, the company plans to bring its pop-up hotel locations to other US cities. On the heels of an office and executive team expansion, as well as the launch of the company's new business arm, Hospitality Living, WhyHotel is laying the ground work for that.

“Houston is a top-tier market with a thriving hotel business, tremendous corporate footprint and robust business travel,” said Fudin. “This is the perfect location for a WhyHotel pop-up hotel and the Camden Downtown development should benefit from WhyHotel's ability to attract guests that will activate the surrounding dining, entertainment and retail spaces.”

During the remainder of this year, WhyHotel will continue its strategic development strategy in new US markets. Additionally, the company will focus efforts towards the design and groundbreaking of the first of its flexible use hospitality living developments with a targeted launch in 2022.

The company announced late last year that it raised $10 million in its Series A funding round. The news came just a few months after the company raised just shy of $4 million in its seed funding round, according to HousingWire.

The capital raise was led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from Camber Creek, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Mendacre, MetaProp and Geolo Capital. According to the company, it plans to use the new funding to launch new pop-up hotels. WhyHotel is a spinoff of Vornado Realty Trust, which developed the concept from within its strategic projects division.