DFW’s luxury hotels are soaring, as the Four Seasons Resort in Las Colinas becomes a Ritz-Carlton next week with a John Tesar restaurant, and downtown Dallas’ J.W. Marriott could fetch $200M in sale

The former Four Seasons Resort in Las Colinas will convert into the Ritz-Carlton Las Colinas on January 23. Insiders who are not authorized to speak on behalf of the company tell EscapeHatch exclusively that high-placed Marriott and Ritz-Carlton executives will be on site for the hand-off. (We were the first to reveal the reflagging more than a year ago.)

Edit: And as readers pointed out to me, I wrote March 23 instead of January 23. You’ll see the date has been corrected above

The hotel’s marquee restaurant is deep into a glamorous transformation for Dallas chef John Tesar’s Knife Italian restaurant, which is expected to open late next month. Tesar says the menu will include favorites from his Knife Steakhouse and his Orlando seafood-focused Spoon restaurant, plus crudos, hand-made pastas, thin-crust pizzas, salads and plenty of veg-forward items. Duck confit risotto. lobster agnolotti, oxtail ravioli caught my eye on the draft menu, and so did king salmon with apple and Calabrian chiles, grilled octopus with ‘nduja, and a 4-pound porterhouse bistecca alla Fiorentina.

Meanwhile. the JW Marriott in downtown Dallas is now up for sale. The Plano-based Sam Moon Group, which developed the 267-room hotel, has hired Eastdil Secured as an advisor for the potential sale of the property. The hotel opened in July 2023 and is whispered to trade hands at as much as $190 million in a sale.

The sale of the JW Marriott comes at a time when the luxury hotel market in Dallas-Fort Worth is surging. The region saw the completion of several hotel projects last year, including Harwood International’s Hotel Swexan and the Omni PGA Resort in Frisco, a $520 million development with two 18-hole golf courses. The Omni PGA Resort will have 500 guest rooms, 49 suites, 10 luxury homes, eight retail spaces, four pools, a Topgolf, and 13 restaurant and bar options when fully completed.

The sale of the JW Marriott and the conversion of the Four Seasons into a Ritz Carlton nod to the changing landscape of the luxury hotel market in Dallas-Fort Worth.