Even death can’t stop Dolly Parton.
Just three weeks after she died from cancer, Ms. Parton’s latest venture, the SongTeller Hotel, opened its doors to guests on Sept. 14. The hotel, on Commerce Street in downtown Nashville, 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-story maximalist lobby where pink marble flooring forms a sweeping guitar beneath an immense multicolored 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 color 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, adjacent 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 Ms. Parton’s catalog of songs play through the lobby and surrounding spaces.
The 245-room, 12-story hotel, officially opens Sept. 29, as does Dolly’s Life of Many Colors Museum on the third floor. The project, in the city where she built her music career, is a capstone to Ms. 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 four million visitors a year to Pigeon Forge, Tenn. “SongTeller Hotel is my love letter to the city,” Ms. Parton was quoted as saying in press materials. “I’ve poured my heart into this new song, and I’m dedicating it to you, Nashville.”
But SongTeller, which was a partnership between Ms. Parton and Herschend, the family-owned entertainment company that developed Dollywood and dozens of other attractions and resorts, now faces an unexpected challenge: Opening a Dolly Parton hotel, without Dolly Parton.
‘Dear Nashville, I Will Always Love You!’
Promotion for the hotel was supposed to start in October 2025, with an opening date of spring 2026, but Ms. Parton canceled a round of interviews, and then delayed a planned Las Vegas residency, because of what were described as “health challenges.” In June, she made what would be her final public appearance at the opening of Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tenn., an hour south of Nashville. Hundreds of people had gathered hoping to see her and she spoke briefly, cut the opening 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. Mr. Seaver denied threatening anyone and said his messages had been taken out of context.
It is fitting that the hotel’s name focuses on Ms. Parton’s songwriting. In 1964, the morning after her high-school graduation, she left for Nashville with enough courage to believe that the songs she had been writing since childhood might provide a living. She signed her first major record deal the following year and would go 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.
I looked through the window at the neon glow coming from the sea of honky-tonks and restaurants below. Just a few minutes away lies Lower Broadway, the heart of Nashville’s live-music scene, with the famed honky-tonks Tootsies Orchid Lounge and Robert’s Western World, and the Ryman Auditorium, the “mother church of country music.” The glass shower in my room could have accommodated four, while two undermounted sinks left ample room on the vanity for preparing for a night out. In one corner of the large vanity mirror, an inscription in white cursive read, “Dear Nashville, I Will Always Love You!, Dolly.”
Standard rooms, called Signature Rooms, range from 362 to 547 square feet, sleep up to four and start at $339 a night. Others take their names from Ms. 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 Ms. Parton and her five sisters, sleeps six and offers two showers and multiple vanities — seemingly aimed straight at Nashville’s bachelorette party market. The largest suite, the 1,865-square-foot, two-story SongTeller Suite, aimed at couples, includes a grand piano.
The hotel also has two performance spaces: Parton’s Live, a second-floor restaurant and large music venue for hosting songwriter sessions, emerging talent and well-known acts; and Jolene’s, a more intimate 11th-floor club overlooking the Cumberland River with craft cocktails, small plates and desserts with a backdrop of live music.
At Parton’s Live on opening night, Emily West and Friends were playing and the room was packed with fans who went from wistful during “Coat of Many Colors” to exuberant during the band’s rollicking rendition of “9 to 5.” Next to me was the Leutholtz family, visiting 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 a trip since the hotel began taking reservations in January.
“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,” Mr. Leutholtz said, referring to Avaline.
When the museum opens Tuesday, it will add gravity to the hotel’s narrative of Ms. Parton’s life. Exhibits are set to include stage costumes spanning seven decades and a section devoted to her achievements. Another will share the story of her Imagination Library, the book program inspired by Ms. Parton’s father, who never learned to read or write.
It’s a considerable amount of life to fit onto one floor. “Opening the hotel is an opportunity to continue telling her story and sharing her extraordinary spirit with the people who come through our doors,” said Shannon Foster, the hotel’s general manager, who oversees its operations, finances and guest experience.
Katie Ziegler, 31, a songwriter from Kansas and “very much” a Dolly fan, spent two nights at SongTeller before the official opening.
“It was very full circle for me in a lot of ways,” she said. “I couldn’t stop crying. But being there also felt peaceful to me.”
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