Hotel Daphne hasn’t yet been open for a month, and its owners are already planning to make it bigger.
The boutique hotel that opened in the Heights earlier this month is preparing a roughly $15 million expansion that would add a two-story, 10-room wing and new amenities to the property at 347 West 20th Street, the Houston Business Journal reported, citing a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Plans call for 11,832 square feet of new construction, including king suites, a single-story pool bar with an adjoining terrace, event space, an event kitchen and a meeting room. Construction is expected to begin in spring 2026 and wrap up in early 2027, though state permit filings are preliminary and often change.
The expansion would build on the momentum of Hotel Daphne’s first phase, which opened Dec. 3 as a joint venture between Austin-based Bunkhouse Hotels and Houston-based Wood Lane Partners. The five-story hotel was pitched as a “neighborhood guest house” meant to blend into the Heights rather than tower over it — a positioning that’s increasingly common among boutique hospitality operators looking to tap into Houston’s more residential submarkets.
The hotel features an interior courtyard, a library that doubles as event space, a retail shop and an all-day restaurant called Hypsi. Design-wise, the project leans into the Heights’ recycled industrial aesthetic, with painted brick, stepped parapets and steel windows. Bunkhouse handled the interiors in-house. Rooms at Hotel Daphne start at $359 per night.
The expansion marks a win for Wood Lane Partners, which has been trying to crack the Heights hotel market for years. An earlier plan for a smaller European-style boutique hotel, Maison Robert, stalled after receiving approvals in 2019 as the pandemic upended hospitality development. Hotel Daphne finally broke ground in 2023, the same year Bunkhouse launched construction on its first Houston property, Hotel Saint Augustine in Montrose.
Saint Augustine opened in 2024 and has since picked up a Michelin Key, marking an early win for Bunkhouse’s brand of design-forward hotels in neighborhood settings.— Eric Weilbacher
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