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Skift Take
Hotel reopenings signal a step forward in New York City’s hotel recovery from the pandemic while Singapore slowly, and I do mean slowly, inches toward fully reopening its international borders.
Skift’s Daily Lodging Report is a subscription-required, email-only newsletter read by anyone and everyone in the hotel investor, owner and operator space, including CEOs of some of the industry’s top brands. With two separate regional versions, it covers everything from North America to Asia Pacific. The report itself, curated by founder Alan Woinski, boils industry news down to a quick, easy-to-read daily digest known for keeping readers up to date in an efficient, effective way.
Here’s a sampling of what the Daily Lodging Report provided to its readers this past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Don’t wait. Sign up now here.
Sunday, Oct. 3
In a promising signal for New York City’s struggling hotel industry, two of Manhattan’s largest hotels are set to reopen in the coming weeks. According to Crain’s, the New York Hilton Midtown will reopen October 4, while the Grand Hyatt is set to welcome guests November 1. This news comes just days after the City Council passed a bill requiring hotels that either closed or have laid off 75 percent of their staff during the pandemic to provide $500 per week in severance pay to service employees for up to 30 weeks. The Hotel Trades Council stated that the 1,900-room Hilton will bring back 325 of its roughly 1,100 employees, while the 1,300-room Hyatt will bring back at least 25 percent of its roughly 700 workers.
Skift Note: New York City’s hotels may not be fully recovered from the pandemic, but city regulation is helping bring some workers back to their old jobs.
Monday, Oct. 4
Macau, which was the model place, considered the safest place in the world for the longest time, has seen a total backfire. They kept things pretty restrictive even with zero cases for so long but now they are in full panic mode. With Golden Week upon them and their first outbreak since the start of the pandemic, they tried to salvage the week for the resorts with the Macau-Zhuhai border measures loosened up. Guangdong chose to maintain the current quarantine measures. Then the border with Zhuhai was supposed to reopen today but then yet another new case in Macau was found and at the last minute they canceled the reopening, Macau canceled school an hour before opening and a third round of mass testing is taking place. As for how Golden Week is going for the Macau casino resorts, the dreams of having 25,000 to 35,000 visitors a day has become a reality of 3,122 visitors arriving over the first two days.
Skift Note: China’s hospitality sector takes another beating thanks to the country’s continue zero-tolerance approach to outbreaks, no matter how small the case count may be.
Tuesday, Oct. 5
Singapore is shortening the quarantine period for travelers entering the city-state and further easing arrival rules for some countries in the latest move to reopen its borders. Arriving travelers from certain regions will need to spend 10 days in isolation starting October 7, instead of the current 14 days. The rules apply to Category III countries including the US and the UK. Meanwhile Covid cases continue to rise with an increase of near 3,000 on Friday, even with some of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Several countries were moved to Category II, where they only need to spend seven days in quarantine, also beginning October 7. Those moved to that group include France, Spain, Netherlands and Sweden. Ireland and Greece were moved to Category III. Singapore is boosting the number of hospital beds, as its health care system is expecting a caseload of 5,000 a day by mid-October. Friday tied the record for the most deaths, with 8 people succumbing to Covid-19’s effects. New infections among foreign workers staying in dormitories doubled on Friday to 818 from a day earlier.
Skift Note: An extraordinary baby step in reopening one of Southeast Asia’s biggest cities to international visitors.
Wednesday, Oct. 6
Sandals Resorts celebrates its 40 years of all-inclusive hospitality by honoring the legacy of its founder with the opening of The Gordon “Butch” Stewart International School of Hospitality and Tourism. The new school will be located on the Western Campus of The University of the West Indies, Mona in the Caribbean’s tourism capital of Montego Bay. Also, in honor of the company’s 40th anniversary, Sandals Resorts International, together with the Sandals Foundation, is identifying forty projects that best showcase the incredible like between tourism, the regions’ most influential industry, and its power to transform Caribbean communities and improve lives. Projects will be selected across five main areas: supporting local farmers, hospitality training & certification, preserving natural resources, harnessing unique artisan crafts and community outreach. Sandals Resorts is also kicking off the conversation with its first-ever pod cast, “Sandals PalmCast”, giving listeners the inside scoop on all the latest happenings across the resorts. There will be Then & Now custom cocktails and new poolside service; Sandals rewind events; and a vintage retail collection in all Beach House resort shops.
Skift Note: It’s been four decades since Sandals launched and played a major role in building up the all-inclusive vacation sector. Read more here on how Sandals and its competitors will evolve after the pandemic.
Thursday, Oct. 7
Star Entertainment wants to take a page out of the playbook of many of the large United States casino resort companies and sell and lease back a minority stake in its $2.3 billion Pyrmont site in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. That would include the gaming floors, three luxury hotels and a swag of high-priced restaurants and retail. While this has been going on in the United States the past few years, analysts are split on the long-term viability of this for some companies like MGM Resorts or Penn National Gaming since they have no physical assets to back up future expansion plans that could involve debt. Under Star’s plan, they will continually invest capital in the Pyrmont infrastructure, which includes 620 hotel rooms across three properties plus at least six signature restaurants as well as outdoor dining. Star would use the sale funds to pay down debt and invest in other growth projects as well as continue to expand its Pyrmont property. Star is in talks with the NSW government to build two new hotel towers at the Pyrmont site, one of which would be a Ritz-Carlton hotel. They are also negotiating for another 1,000 gaming machines. Analysts in Australia are suggesting flipping Star Sydney into an opco/propco structure could realize $1.8 to $2.6 billion in value.
Skift Note: Casino companies continue to look into following the hotel industry’s asset-light model, but it may not be as easy for gambling brands to go down this path.
Hilton announced a partnership between its Tempo by Hilton brand and Bluestone Lane. The collaboration marks a first-of-its-kind partnership, with Hilton and Bluestone Lane co-creating unique on-property food and beverage experiences together at Tempo by Hilton hotels, showcasing the award-winning Bluestone Lane food and beverage offerings, including coffee, juice and tea and other branded products. Bluestone Lane owns and operates more than 55 coffee shops and cafes in the U.S. With more than a dozen confirmed projects under development, travelers will soon be able to experience Tempo by Hilton in the coming years with recent signings including Tempo Memphis Downtown Union Row, Tempo New York City Manhattan Downtown World Trade Center Area; Tempo Irving Las Colinas, Tempo Seattle Downtown and Tempo Milwaukee Downtown.
Skift Note: This is a major shot in the arm for hotels reviving and improving food and beverage offerings after many of these programs were gutted during the pandemic.
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