Like restaurants, retail and commercial real estate, Baton Rouge’s hospitality industry took a swift and immediate hit from the mitigation measures designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Once business travel, leisure travel and the springtime gatherings that usually keep hotels hopping this time of year had been canceled, occupancy at the area’s 73 hotels plummeted to around 10%—a fraction of the 70% or so that is typical in late March.
As a result, thousands of workers across the region—including front desk clerks, catering and banquet sales associates, maids and wait staff—had been laid off.
“A majority of all the hotels have laid off people,” says Scott Michelet, general manager of the Crowne Plaza and president of the Baton Rouge Lodging Association. “But we told everyone we laid off to keep their phones close by because once we need them we’re going to call them right back.”
The problem is no one knows when that might be—weeks, months or longer—and the question is how many properties can survive in the meantime with skeleton crews and low-double-digit occupancy, or worse? Read the full story from the latest edition of Business Report.
