Hotel operators in New Orleans expect a modest increase in guests for the final weekend of the Mardi Gras season. However, with parades being canceled and officials threatening further restrictions related to pandemics, nobody expects anything close to a normal carnival.
The city’s largest hotel properties, such as the Hotel Monteleone, the Sheraton on Canal Street, the Royal Sonesta in Bourbon, the Roosevelt on Roosevelt Way, and Loews on Poydras Street, forecast bookings peaking between 50% and 60% of the capacity of the Weekend before carnival, according to hotel managers and owners.
Estimates, based on current bookings, would represent a jump from recent weekends during the pandemic, when hotels filled about three out of ten rooms, even though they were well below typical Carnival values.
Stephen Caputo, general manager of the Monteleone, said the Royal Street landmark had bookings for around 30% to 35% of its 570 rooms for Saturday, February 13, when visitor numbers are expected to peak before the fat Tuesday on February will. 16. He said he expected this to go up in the next week or something.
“The weekend looks pretty strong and when we get there we should be around 50%,” said Caputo.
The larger hotels were, on average, more optimistic than respondents in a recent survey by New Orleans & Co., the city’s tourism marketing agency. The 23 hotels surveyed assume that occupancy will peak on February 13 at 41% and will drop again to 11% the following Thursday.
According to the hotel consultant STR, the hotel occupancy rate averaged just over 30% in January. Room rates were also down sharply, with revenue per available room (REVpar) averaging $ 28 and well below breakeven for most hotels.
Last year during the extended Carnival weekend, the average occupancy for the four most popular Carnival nights was well over 90%, and REVPar, which takes rates and occupancy into account, was over $ 250, according to STR.
Still, the expectation that the larger New Orleans hotels could be half full for the final Mardi Gras weekend is a hopeful sign for the hotel industry, but a potentially worrying development for public health officials.
With the coronavirus still spreading rapidly, thousands of additional revelers drinking and gathering for the celebrations will undoubtedly mean more cases.
And while the city has restrictions banning large public gatherings, few have heeded them over the past few weekends in the French Quarter. On Tuesday, after videos of crowds in Bourbon Street sparked outrage on Saturday, City Hall spokesman Beau Tidwell warned that the city is still considering more restrictive measures and that large gatherings are not allowed.
“We’re staying in an unsafe environment and they won’t be allowed on Fat Tuesday or the days before,” he said.
Some small events are still being planned. Despite the dire outlook this year, Al Groos, general manager of the Royal Sonesta, said the hotel on Bourbon Street is expecting a version of its “Smear the Poles” event, which has been held outside the hotel on Bourbon Street for 50 years.
This year, the event will take place in an inner courtyard of the hotel and has the motto “Mardi Gras MASKerade” in order to integrate the pandemic protocol in a festive way. It is streamed live on Facebook.
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The Sheraton and its sister property, the Marriott on Canal Street, are also keen to make the most of the lost Carnival season by offering packages that allow guests to take advantage of some of the city’s impromptu Mardi Gras celebrations.
Scott Jernstrom, director of sales and marketing for the two hotels, said a three-hour chauffeured tour for up to six people will be offered to see the house swimmers that have sprung up across the city. Hotels will drop $ 100 in credit for food and drink they bring for the ride.
“We hope more people will come to see how the city is embracing the carnival season,” said Jernstrom.
For some of the city’s smaller establishments, however, it’s a matter of survival this year.
Mónica Ramsey, owner of Canal Street Inn, said that over the past five years, connoisseur electrical company Ardent Services has booked all of its 20 rooms and gathered a crowd of several hundred to watch the Endymion parade from their best standpoint .
“I just want to survive this year,” she said. “I know things will get better, but my goal now is to get by and we only have one or two people a week, that’s it.”
She said Ardent Services has decided to re-book all of their rooms this year, even though there is a maximum of 20 people allotted for a “corporate retreat” that will have some type of steamed food and drink on Saturday.
“They decided to do this just to keep business with me and to help the catering company,” said Ramsey. “And every penny counts, let me tell you.”
