Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidVistaChino
It would be interesting to know what the staffing for all the downtown hotels looks like.
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I work at one of the downtown convention hotels, and as it happens the only one that's still open.
Staffing is down to the absolute bare bones. A single person working the front desk, a skeleton crew for engineering and housekeeping. We still have a nominal sales staff, but they're only there keeping the lights on and managing what groups we have left. No banquets or events, no spa, all of our food outlets are closed and we only have grab and go room service options. The majority of our guestroom floors are locked off, and we only have about 30 rooms in current rotation. Even so, most nights we can count rooms sold on one or two hands. It's indescribable, especially compared to where we were just a month ago.
For the first few weeks in March there was broad sentiment in our industry that we'd only have to close for a couple of weeks or a month at most and travel would bounce right back to original levels. I'm not sure where that optimism came from, but it's clearly incorrect now. Now, some or our trade groups are projecting that almost the entire year will be a loss -- maybe some light at the end of the tunnel in Q4, but also maybe not. And the climb back up is going to be very slow and painful, and the very very last thing to climb back will be group business, which is convention-style stuff, and the kind of business that makes the Fairmont and the JW and the new Marriott and the Hilton go.
Another question that's nagging at me is what kind of destination we'll have when people actually start to travel. Is all the stuff that Austin is rightly famous for going to be desirable again? Most of what we do so well is the opposite of socially distanced, and I wonder what will happen when groups come back, will we be what they want? That's a couple of steps down the road, of course, but it's the time to start thinking about it.
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