INTERVIEW:
ROMY BHOJWANI
Head of Hospitality
Asset Management,
Brookfield
The International Luxury Hotel Association spoke
with Romy Bhojwani during the COVID-19 crisis
to understand how the hotel industry is being
affected and what strategies he is putting in place
for the future.
He told us that business is being impacted across
the board and 8 in 10 hotel rooms are empty.
Roughly 15% of the hotels are shut down in the
United States, while the others have significantly
scaled back their operations to respond to this
extreme low level of demand. The Midscale
without F&B and Extended Stay segments have
been impacted lesser than the other chain scales
segments. The luxury sector has been impacted
the most, and owners and operators have no real
clarity on how long the situation will continue. In
many cases, it just does not make sense to stay
open given the large delta between carry costs
during shutdown vs. operating costs when open.
Owners and operators agree that the risk is
too great of having a contamination incident
on property, and they do not want the public
perception that they are not following executive
orders to stay at home and social distance.
A hotel in Boston was hosting a biotech
conference in late February, where some of the
attendees who had been working in COVID-19
affected areas in China caused multiple infections
including among staff and the virus infiltrated the
HVAC system, causing the CDC to take over the
site for clean-up purposes. “If something like that
had to happen the consequences are very severe
from a reputation standpoint,” said Romy. “In
certain cases, like large group hotels or hotels with
heavy food and beverage operations, it is clear
that a temporary shutdown is the only logical
option.”
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ILHA