With vacation trips returning, most Garden State hotels still struggle with major issues.
Dana Lancellotti, President and CEO of the New Jersey Restaurant & Hospitality Association, said many industries have received funding for a pandemic but the hospitality industry has not, and after 16 months of COVID restrictions, many of these companies will be forced to close, if they don’t get you any help.
“We can’t seem to give them funding in terms of funding to help them with the needs they need to come back,” she said.
She said that in addition to financial support from the hotel industry, “there is also a need to incentivize more business travel to keep conferences coming back, incentives to get this part of our economic engine going again.”
Lancellotti noted that hotels opened their doors when teams of doctors and first aiders were dispatched to Jersey in the early days of the pandemic, helping house quarantined COVID patients, hosting vaccination campaigns, but now they are in desperate need of help themselves.
A new report from the American Hotel and Lodging Association finds that the New Jersey hotel industry could lose another 12,392 hotel jobs by the end of this year if Congress and individual states don’t approve financial aid.
Lancellotti said that not only are many hotels generating a lot of revenue during the pandemic, they are also experiencing a labor shortage, much like many other companies, and “they are going through the same thing as everyone else because products and delivery costs are sky high. ”
She suggested that some former hotel workers may not return to their jobs and look for other opportunities because of lower wages, sometimes poor social benefits, and a stressful job.
To make up for the lack of funding across the board, hotels have been looking for ways to cut costs, including reducing the daily cleaning service.
“So if you’re staying for a few days, don’t even knock on the door unless you’ve asked the hotels to clean the room,” she said.
She also pointed out that hotels “change gastronomy and things like that, when things are covered in plastic, you know they do a lot of things just to be safe.”
She stressed that efforts are underway to let the governor and lawmakers know how badly the industry is in need of help and how important this industry really is.
“This is how we support tourism, this is how we support business trips, conventions, sports tournaments and all the things we need to get back to our state and get well,” she said. “The hotels are the ones that make it work. Without hotel accommodation we cannot do business, we definitely do not want to lose our hotels. “
The American Hotel & Lodging Association report notes that hotel occupancy is expected to decrease 10% this year compared to 2019, and nationwide revenue is expected to decrease by about $ 44 billion compared to two years ago.
You can reach reporter David Matthau at David.Matthau@townsquaremedia.com
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