All Articles Tagged "hospitality industry"
Atlanta Lost 10K Hospitality Jobs in Recession
(Atlanta Business Chronicle) — One-third of the nation’s 100 major markets have more jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector today than before the onset of the recession, but not metro Atlanta. Atlanta has lost 10,400 jobs in its tourism industry since the Great Recession, according to an On Numbers study of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Local Hotel Chains Ratchet up Diversity Initiatives
(Washington Post) — All 44 of Baywood’s hotels along the Eastern Seaboard fly the flags of these Washington-area companies. Within a span of weeks last summer, Baywood opened a 171-room Doubletree by Hilton in Sterling and a 98-suite SpringHill Suites by Marriott in Woodbridge. While capital and connections traditionally have been barriers for many minority businesses, area hotel chains are ratcheting up their diversity initiatives. That’s not to say the playing field has been leveled, but underrepresented groups are gaining ground.
Bethesda-based Marriott operates 572 women- and minority-owned hotels nationwide as of January. Six years ago, the company set a goal of getting 500 hotels in the hands of diverse owners by 2010. That objective was part of a larger diversity agenda that included a pledge to spend $1 billion with minority suppliers, a goal Marriott has surpassed by $1.3 billion.
Trading Essence for Entrepreneurship
(The New York Times) — Over the course of an hour on a Wednesday afternoon, Bedford-Stuyvesant bed-and-breakfast owner Monique Greenwood received five phone calls, chatted to a passerby about her business, prepared orange juice, said goodbye to a client, and helped another find his way to the subway station. “You want to know if I sleep?” Ms. Greenwood asked. “No!” she said, laughing.
Born in Washington D.C., Ms. Greenwood, a former editor-in-chief of the national African-American women’s magazine Essence, and her husband Glenn Pogue, moved to Bed-Stuy in 1989. Five years later, they fell in love with a dilapidated and abandoned brownstone on 347 MacDonough Street “Children of the neighborhood used to call it the ‘haunted house,’” said Ms. Greenwood.
After sinking nine months and $500,000 into renovations, the couple opened Akwaaba Mansion, then the only bed-and-breakfast in the neighborhood, on July 4th, 1995. Ms. Greenwood quit her high-profile job at Essence in 2001.
Hospitality Leaders Making Their Case to Georgia Legislators
(AJC) — Atlanta and Georgia hospitality leaders have a message for state legislators: cut with caution. Acutely aware that tourism and related industries like film making are being eyed as for possible savings in the state budget, the leaders have met with elected officials to make a case for sparing as much hospitality funding as possible. They also have advised treading carefully on immigration reform. A bill considered hostile to immigrants, they said, could hurt visitation, especially among conventioneers sensitive to controversial issues.
“We appreciate the pressure that legislators are under to balance the budget and we wanted to reiterate the value of tourism in increasing revenues and creating jobs,” said Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau Executive Vice President of Sales Mark Vaughan. Tourism’s economic impact was more than $31.3 billion in the state in fiscal 2010, down from $34.8 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the most recent numbers available. The Department of Economic Development, the state’s hospitality arm, trumpeted that message early in Gov. Nathan Deal’s first days in office with a ceremonial check in January.
BET Founder Buys Midtown Hotel
(Wall Street Journal) — A company controlled by Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the Black Entertainment Television network, has cut a $335 million deal for a Midtown hotel known for its striking architecture. The upscale Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel is the third hotel that Mr. Johnson’s RLJ Development has bought in Manhattan since 2008. He also bought the Hilton Garden Inn at 63 W. 35th St. and the Fashion 26 Hotel at 152 W. 26th St. for more than $100 million each. ”These assets are compliant with our investment strategy to buy high-caliber real estate,” RLJ Development President Thomas J. Baltimore Jr. said in an interview Friday. “In New York, we have significant demand growth and high barriers to entry.”
Jay-Z Abandons Plans for Luxury Hotel Brand
(Eurweb.com) *Jay-Z has scrapped plans to build a luxury hotel in his native New York after the venture became mired in litigation, reports the New York Post. The rap mogul and his business partners have reportedly pulled out of the J Hotel project altogether and returned the site to its lenders for $52 million. Jay-Z’s group purchased the property in Dec. 2007 for $66 million, and obtained the multi-million dollar loan that was assigned to investment managers Highland Capital Management LP and serviced by NexBank SSB. But the deal went bad after partners failed to attract investors and there was a shortfall in funds – prompting Jay-Z to offer the land back to bosses at Highland rather than face foreclosure.
District’s Shaw Neighborhood Preps for $520-Million Hotel
(Afro) — On Nov. 10, Washington, D.C. Chairman-elect Kwame R. Brown, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray and leaders from the Washington Convention and Sports Authority (WCSA) gathered to inaugurate ground in the District’s historic Shaw neighborhood in preparation for the 2014 opening of the Marriott Marquis Convention Center Hotel, located at Ninth St. and Massachusetts Ave., N.W., across from the Washington Convention Center. The site will be expected to fuel the surrounding community with both construction jobs and long-term hotel jobs once construction is completed.
Hipster Quarters, Corporate Owners
(Crain’s) — New York City has plenty of boutique-style hotels—the intentionally trendy, unique lodgings meant to appeal to guests who don’t want to stay in a cookie-cutter Sheraton or Hilton. A bevy of hotels bearing such quirky names as Andaz, Indigo and Aloft opened this year. And even more are on the way. About half of the 20 hotels set to open this year and in 2011 can be classified as boutique properties, according to PKF Consulting, which tracks the hotel industry.
