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Some early data on the decimation the coronavirus has wrought on the hospitality industry, specifically hotels, is in. And, not surprisingly, given its population and large reliance on tourism, Florida is at the front of the line in a massive drop in business.
For starters, only California, with 125,454 hotel job losses, surpasses Florida’s 88,631 lost hotel jobs, according to a state-by-state breakdown from the American Hotel and Lodging Association, in conjunction with Oxford Economics. Only Nevada, with 85,130 losses and Texas, with 64,072, surpass 50,000 in total layoffs and furloughs. “The hotel industry is facing an abrupt and unprecedented drop in hotel demand that is gaining pace and getting progressively deeper and more severe week by week,” states the report, released March 20.
Overall, the report states 44% of hotel employees in every state are projected to have lost or will lose their jobs in coming weeks. In addition, based on current occupancy estimates, the association projects four million total jobs have been eliminated already or are on the verge of being lost in the next few weeks. In certain affected markets, including Seattle, San Francisco, Austin and Boston, hotel occupancy rates are already down below 20%, and individual hotels and major operators have already shut down operations.
“The impact to our industry is already more severe than anything we’ve seen before,” AHLA President and CEO Chip Rogers says in the release, “including September 11th and the great recession of 2008 combined.”
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