The Salt Hotel in Ilwaco is open and ready for business. A woman cleans room number 7 — just one of the 21 rooms owners Laila Brown and Julez Orr hope to have available by the end of summer — after a guest leaves.

ILWACO — The Salt Hotel, next to the busy marina at the Port of Ilwaco, has been full nearly every weekend since it opened for visitors at the beginning of July.

Most recently, with the Tuna Classic in full swing in Ilwaco, “We could have filled up the hotel four times over,” said Laila Brown, who owns and operates the business with her husband Julez Orr.

Remodeling work is still ongoing, but they have finished 17 rooms and plan to have a total of 21 available by the time they wrap up (hopefully, they say) at the end of August. Most of the rooms simply contain a queen bed and a bathroom, but there are several bunk rooms and rooms with king-size beds, too.

It has been a daunting project, Orr and Brown say. Not only have they opened the hotel this year, they also moved their surf rental and retail business, Skookum Surf Co., to a small storefront at the front of the hotel. The store had been based out of their house in Seaview for a number of years. They’re also in the middle of building a cafe/guest lounge in the back area, looking out over the marina on the lower floor, and a restaurant on the second floor. The restaurant is scheduled to be online by November, Orr said. But, even as he’s hurrying to finish up rooms, he’s not interested in rushing the restaurant.

“The worst thing you can do is open up (a restaurant) in a hurry on a busy weekend,” he said. The winter will give them plenty of time to iron out staffing and service issues, he said. When summer comes, he thinks they’ll be ready for the crowds that roll through the Long Beach Peninsula for beach vacations and fishing trips.

Brown and Orr have already opened up the lower outdoor patio, which will eventually lead into the cafe and guest lounge, allowing tourists and Saturday Market visitors to sit, rest and enjoy the view.

The building, built in 1972, has a long history in Ilwaco, Orr said. It provided rooms to fishermen in town for the night and Julez has heard multiple accounts of people being thrown off the narrow, marina-facing balcony upstairs to the street below in bar fights.

The hotel side of the operation is still serving fishermen, Brown said, though mostly the out-of-town sport fishermen who flock to Chinook and Ilwaco in search of salmon during the summer recreational ocean and river fisheries.

“That’s already here,” Brown said about the summer fishing crowd, “and we want to accommodate them.”

But she says they are also interested in attracting outdoor adventurers and international travelers. The handful of European visitors they’ve had to stay at the hotel already have been very intrigued by Ilwaco, Orr said.

In many ways, the surf shop, which they’ve operated for just over a decade, gave them insight into who comes to the Peninsula, how they heard about the area and why they made the trek, Brown said.

“We just want to make sure that people leave here wanting to come back,” Orr said.

Rooms cost $95 to $125 during the high summer season (June 15-Sept.15), $85 to $115 from Sept. 16 to Nov. 1 and Feb. 14 to June 14, and $80 to $105 during the winter storm season (Nov. 1 to Feb. 13). For more information, visit www.salt-hotel.com, call 360-642-7258 or e-mail adventures@salt-hotel.com.