Lewisburg hotel named Fairfield by Marriott's 2025 Hotel of the Year

Fairfield Inn & Suites Lewisburg earned Marriott International’s 2025 Hotel of the Year honor, one of the Fairfield by Marriott brand’s highest awards. The recognition was tied to guest satisfaction, operational performance, brand standards and overall hotel achievement, putting a Lewisburg property in the same category as the brand’s strongest performers.

The award lands at a hotel that opened in August 2021 with 107 rooms on Penn House Commons, a location Marriott markets as walking distance to Bucknell University and the Miller Center and close to Historic Downtown Lewisburg, Route 15 and Interstate 80. Marriott also points to the World of Little League Museum among the nearby attractions, a reminder that the property sits in a travel corridor shaped by campus visits, family weekends, tournament traffic and regional business stays.

That mix matters in Lewisburg because hotel demand here is not driven by one season or one event. Bucknell’s roughly 3,900 undergraduates generate a steady flow of parents, alumni, prospective students and athletic visitors, while the borough’s downtown and adjacent historic neighborhoods are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, giving the area a built-in draw for visitors looking beyond campus. In a place where restaurants, shops and other service employers depend on foot traffic, a hotel that wins national brand recognition can help reinforce the borough’s image as a reliable overnight stop.

The property was developed through a joint venture between Shaner Hotel Group and True Story, and Shaner also manages the hotel. Shaner’s awards page identifies Fairfield Inn & Suites Lewisburg as a 2025 Hotel of the Year winner and lists Rene McKibben as Fairfield brand General Manager of the Year for 2025, linking the Lewisburg recognition to the people running the operation as much as the building itself.

Fairfield by Marriott says it operates more than 950 locations worldwide, which makes the Lewisburg award notable for a small borough with a visitor economy tied closely to Bucknell and the Susquehanna River Valley. For Lewisburg, the distinction is more than a plaque on the wall: it places a newer local hotel on a national honor roll and gives the borough a concrete branding advantage in the competition for bookings, visitor traffic and the spending that follows them.