In California, add into that that hotels that finally got opened after Covid, are closed again due to fires. Even before the park closure, the famed Ahwahnee Hotel had six rooms full (so roughly speaking 5% occupancy vs 95-100% occupancy normal in this period).
A friend who is a server in the dining room, which can seat 250 on a busy day, waited on the lone couple dining in the cavernous space. "Welcome to your private dining room," he said as he approached their table.
>>convention
As I mentioned before, even for hotels that don't seem to be dependent on conference business, it can be the 10-20% that puts them into the black. It also lets hotels bring rates down for leisure guests. Of course, on dates when a hotel has a strong conference business, that pushes the cost for leisure guests up. But globally, it tends to push it down even though conference guests pay a much-reduced rate.
So it's a double-whammy. The hotel loses the 20% of their business due to conferences. If the demand were there, they could cover it by raising the leisure rate, but in fact they have to cut the leisure rate, so they are getting it on both ends.
