Manteca, 25 years ago, had less than 250 hotel rooms.

That’s when there were only three hotels catering to the traveling and vacationing public in all of Manteca.
Today, workers are erecting a 112-room, four-story Woodspring Suites on the southeast quadrant of the 120 Bypass and Atherton Drive interchange that will vault Manteca within a few rooms shy of the 1,300 room mark.

If an approved 117-room, 4-story Courtyard by Marriot near the Chick-fil-A on Atherton Drive is built, Manteca will inch past 1,400 rooms.

And the room count will go even higher if the Village at Villa Ticino center planned for the southwest corner of Louise Avenue and Airport Way gains approve for — and snares — a 132-room hotel.

The Village at Villa Ticino developer is planning a gas station, car wash, and convenience store in the first phase on the 19.71 acre site they intend to break ground on this year.

The second phase — the hotel, a 40,000-square-foot supermarket, 24,725 square feet of retail, 7,000 square feet of fast-food restaurant without drive-through windows, and 11,000 square feet of fast-food restaurant with drive-through windows — has a targeted completion date in 2028.

To put what could be 1,500 hotel rooms in Manteca by 2030 into perspective, Visit Stockton notes that San Joaquin County’s largest city with 320,000 residents has over 2,000 hotel rooms.

The three Manteca hotels catering to the traveling and vacationing public back in 2000 were all located with a block of the Yosemite Avenue and Highway 99 interchange.

Today, the epicenter for hotel rooms has shifted to the 120 Bypass and Airport Way interchange.

There was nothing 19 years ago near the Airport Way and 120 Bypass interchange except corn fields and bare ground.

In the next few years, there will be a hotel on every quadrant of the interchange with a combined total of 829 rooms.

The 101-room, 4-story Staybridge Suites opened last year along Daniels Street on the northeast side of the interchange.

It was the second to locate near the interchange since the Great Wolf Indoor Waterpark Resort opened in 2020 with 500 rooms.

Great Wolf is the largest hotel in the Great Central Valley from Redding to Bakersfield.

During the approval process for the family resort, Great Wollf representatives said Manteca would see a surge in hotel  room construction  once they opened.

They credited it to attendees at events at their conference center that opt not to book a room at Great Wolf.

In addition, as former Councilman Richard Silverman noted at the time, Great Wolf would end up being a five-story billboard for Manteca along the 120 Bypass.

It’s mere presence grabs attention but so does Great Wolf’s multi-million dollar annual advertising.

That, according to several hotel operators in the city, raised the traveling public’s awareness of Manteca especially with Yosemite-bound visitors.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com