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Dolly Parton's 245-room SongTeller Hotel opened September 14 in downtown Nashville, three weeks after her death from cancer, with a museum, performance venues and songwriting-themed suites.
Dolly Parton's SongTeller Hotel opened its doors to guests on September 14, just three weeks after she died from cancer. The 245-room, 12-story hotel sits on Commerce Street in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, where she built her music career.
Inside Dolly's SongTeller Lobby
The hotel is hard to miss, with a guitar-shaped entrance and gold strings rising several stories to an illuminated butterfly. Guests step through the doors into a two-storey maximalist lobby where pink marble flooring forms a sweeping guitar beneath an immense multicoloured chandelier. When I arrived to check in, fans were taking selfies and gathering for group photos.
As I passed two women, one in a cowboy hat and the other in a denim miniskirt, the woman in denim said to her friend that she felt like crying. There is plenty of Dolly on display: the vibrant colour and glitter, the exuberant femininity. And everywhere there are nods to songwriting, including suites designed as places to write and a scheduled daily writing hour for guests.
In the Listening Lobby, next to the main entrance, a massive guitar-shaped communal writing table flecked with jewel-toned inlays sits under a gilded ceiling. At the top of every hour, recordings of Parton's catalogue of songs play through the lobby and surrounding spaces. The hotel officially opens Tuesday, as does Dolly's Life of Many Colors Museum on the third floor.
Dollywood Legacy and Hotel Partnership
The project, in the city where she built her music career, is a capstone to Parton's four decades in the tourism and hospitality business. Dollywood, which opened in 1986, grew to include a water park, two resorts and dinner shows attracting about 4 million visitors a year to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. SongTeller was a partnership between Parton and Herschend, the family-owned entertainment company that developed Dollywood and dozens of other attractions and resorts.
Parton said in press materials: SongTeller Hotel is my love letter to the city. I've poured my heart into this new song, and I'm dedicating it to you, Nashville. But the hotel now faces an unexpected challenge: opening a Dolly Parton hotel without Dolly Parton.
Promotion was supposed to start in October 2025, with an opening date of northern spring 2026, but Parton cancelled a round of interviews, and then delayed a planned Las Vegas residency, because of what were described as health challenges. In June, she made her final public appearance at the opening of Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tennessee, an hour south of Nashville. Hundreds gathered hoping to see her; she spoke briefly, cut the ribbon and was whisked away.
Even as the hotel opened, a dispute over her business empire reached court. Her longtime manager's company sought a restraining order against her nephew Bryan Seaver, who had overseen security at her properties, accusing him of making threats intended to obtain money from the estate. Seaver denied threatening anyone and said his messages had been taken out of context. It is fitting that the hotel's name focuses on Parton's songwriting.
Parton's Career and Musical Tributes
In 1964, the morning after her high school graduation, she left for Nashville with enough courage to believe the songs she had been writing since childhood might provide a living. She signed her first major record deal the following year and went on to win 10 Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Dolly is nearly omnipresent throughout the hotel. In my ninth-floor room, a large portrait of her greeted me in shimmering pink.
I had chosen a river-view room overlooking Historic Second Avenue and the Cumberland River. Above the two beds, enlarged concert tickets served as wallpaper behind illuminated upholstered headboards. Guitar-shaped pillows, fuchsia of course, sat against the white bedding. Through the window, the neon glow of honky-tonks and restaurants shines below.
Just minutes away lies Lower Broadway, the heart of Nashville's live-music scene, with famed honky-tonks Tootsies Orchid Lounge and Robert's Western World, and the Ryman Auditorium, the mother church of country music. The glass shower could accommodate four, while two undermounted sinks leave ample vanity room. In one corner of the large vanity mirror, white cursive reads: Dear Nashville, I Will Always Love You! Dolly.
Rooms, Suites, and Music Venues
Standard rooms, called Signature Rooms, range from 33 to 51 square metres, sleep up to four and start at $US339 ($490) a night. Others take their names from Parton's music and family and rise in price. Acoustic Suites were conceived as places for musicians to write, with separate seating areas and acoustic guitars. The Six Sisters Suite, named for Parton and her five sisters, sleeps six and offers two showers and multiple vanities, seemingly aimed at Nashville's hen's party market.
The largest suite, the 173-square-metre, two-storey SongTeller Suite, aimed at couples, includes a grand piano. The hotel has two performance spaces. Parton's Live is a second-floor restaurant and large music venue for songwriter sessions, emerging talent and well-known acts. Jolene's is a more intimate 11th-floor club overlooking the Cumberland River with craft cocktails, small plates and desserts backed by live music.
At Parton's Live on opening night, Emily West and Friends played to a packed room of fans who went from wistful during Coat of Many Colors onward. Next to one visitor sat the Leutholtz family from California, all Dolly fans: Steve, 71; his son Jake, 45; Jake's wife Ashly, 42; and their daughter Avaline, 10. Steve Leutholtz said he had been planning the trip since the hotel began taking reservations in January.
He said: When we heard that Dolly was going to build this hotel, my granddaughter Avi is a big Dolly fan, I told her we would go there when it opens. When the museum opens Tuesday, it will add gravity to the hotel's narrative.
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brisbanetimes:Dolly’s last project: Parton-themed hotel opens in Nashville 
theage:Dolly’s last project: Parton-themed hotel opens in NashvilleThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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