October 22, 2020

COVID Victims

By roads-rus

Another hotel in New York City, The Roosevelt, has announced that it is closing permanently. It becomes the 5th major hotel in this city to give up since COVID became part of our conversations. Mostly high end hotels have been affected so far, but others are sure to follow because the hotel industry has reportedly lost $46 billion since the pandemic began last March.

The Roosevelt has been in business for 96 years. It opened in midtown Manhattan in 1924 and was named for the the man who would become President Roosevelt 9 years later. The Roosevelt was a legendary hotel for an upper income clientele. Several popular films like Men in Black III were shot there. Near Times Square, which has been especially hard hit by the COVID crisis, The Roosevelt was owned by Pakistan International Airlines.

Other New York hotel properties that have gone out of business since last March include the Hilton in Times Square, the Maxwell Hotel, one W New York, and the Omni Berkshire Place. The Hilton was on 42nd Street and had 487 rooms. Its employees numbered 200, so these jobs have been permanently lost unless a miracle happens, like a COVID vaccine. The Maxwell, another high end hotel property, gave up and closed last April. It was the original W Hotel in New York City. There are 3 Ws surviving. The ones at Union Square and in Times Square are still in business. So far. However, the downtown location shut for good on October 13, 2020. The 3rd W Hotel in the area is in Hoboken, NJ. Another hotel casualty in New York City was the Omni Berkshire Place in midtown where the musical Oklahoma was written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The Courtyard by Marriott on West 35th and 5th Avenue has also closed.

The Business Journal reports that 20% of New York City’s hotel rooms might go away before the pandemic eases. That’s about 25,000 rooms. And New York City might not be the only city affected. I wrote about the new St. Jane Chicago replacing the Hard Rock Hotel on Michigan Avenue in my last published blog. Chicago’s legendary Palmer House is threatened with foreclosure. Chicago’s 2nd largest hotel, the Palmer House has defaulted on a more than $333 million mortgage but still may survive.

Hank

About roads-rus

Since the beginning, I've had to avoid writing about the downside of travel in order to sell more than 100 articles. Just because something negative happened doesn't mean your trip was ruined. But tell that to publishers who are into 5-star cruise and tropical beach fantasies. I want to tell what happened on my way to the beach, and it may not have been all that pleasant. My number one rule of the road is...today's disaster is tomorrow's great story. My travel experiences have appeared in about twenty magazines and newspapers. I've been in all 50 states more than once and more than 50 countries. Ruth and I love to travel internationally--Japan, Canada, China, Argentina, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, etc. Within the next 2 years we will have visited all of the European countries. But our favorite destination is Australia. Ruth and I have been there 9 times. I've written a book about Australia's Outback, ALONE NEAR ALICE, which is available through both Amazon & Barnes & Noble. My first fictional work, MOVING FORWARD, GETTING NOWHERE, has recently been posted on Amazon. It's a contemporary, hopefully funny re-telling of The Odyssey. View all posts by roads-rus
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2020 at 11:40 pm and posted in Worthy Hotels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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