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The Sept. 11 meeting of the New York Hospitality Council began as it usually does, high up in the Rainbow Room at 30 Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, with an 8 a.m. breakfast get-together of hospitality industry leaders. We were about to embark on a roundtable discussion on "How Far is Down? The Outlook for Hospitality." The topic had been selected because of our increasing concerns with the U.S. recession that had actually started six months earlier. While the meeting began uneventfully, it was brusquely interrupted by the epic and infamous events that unrolled before our very eyes on that fateful morning. Much has changed since that day. The industry has had to contend with nationwide cutbacks in corporate travel, canceled conventions, declining consumer confidence, sharp downturns in air travel, corporate restructurings, employee layoffs, capital spending deferrals and defaulting loan covenants. Hardly business as usual. One of the greatest challenges for our industry, therefore, is the uncertainty of the short- and medium-term future. The current question is how and when will recovery begin? In the wake of Sept. 11 and the slowdown in the U.S. economy that was already well underway before the terrorist attacks, the hospitality sector has seen a sharp decline in both occupancy and pricing. This has affected both the short- and medium-term outlook for many hotel owners, investors, lenders and hospitality companies. All of these interests are re-assessing their relationships and the prospects for a turnaround... To read the complete article, click here to download the printable pdf file (74 kb).
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