The Holiday Inn Express and Suites opened Wednesday, becoming the first four-story public building in Bainbridge.

The hotel, which is located behind Douglas Plaza on Tallahassee Highway, opened Wednesday with five customers spending the night in the new 73-room hotel, said Stacey Powell, general manager of the hotel. In fact, one customer was commuting from Thomasville’s Holiday Inn Express to Bainbridge every day until the hotel opened.

The hotel is the only one in Bainbridge that has an interior corridor to the rooms, said Sharad Patel, managing partner of BNS Hospitality of Bainbridge LLC, the owners of the new hotel.

Patel said a lot of travelers are women, and there’s added security with having those customers going to their rooms within the confines of the hotel, instead of walking to their rooms along an exterior corridor.

The added security and the lobbying by Powell, a Bainbridge resident, were the two main reasons the company decided to build the new hotel, Patel said.

The hotel first broke ground almost two years ago, but delays were mainly attributed to other projects the company was constructing, Patel said.

Powell said a sign of good things to come is that there were at least three potential customers a night inquiring about staying there, several days prior to its opening. The hotel already has more than 100 reservations.

Among some of the amenities are an enclosed, climate-controlled pool, a 75- to 100-person meeting room and a board room, Patel said.

Anywhere from 15 to 25 persons will be employed at the hotel, Powell said.