Hotels across the country are already closing and laying off thousands of workers due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business, according to the industry’s association.
“The hotel industry virtually crashed over the last 10 days. In a period of 48 hours last week, occupancy dropped by 50 per cent across the industry,” says Susie Grynol, CEO of the Hotel Association of Canada.
“Today we’re sitting at under 10 per cent,, which is not enough to sustain business operations, so in the last two days, we’ve seen at least 100 hotel closures.”
One famous landmark hotel to suspend operations is Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier.
Practically all of the big brand names, including Marriott, Hilton and IHG have closed some Canadian locations as occupancy rates fell hard and fast with the pandemic.
What a difference a week makes. When concerns about COVID-19 became more elevated, hotel occupancy in Canada quickly fell to about 50 per cent according to STR, a company that analyzes data for the global hospitality sectors. Now, some hotels have only 10 per cent occupancy. (STR)
Some of the hotels hanging on are near airports, says Grynol. “They’re housing distressed passengers who are trying to get home.”
What’s needed to save jobs and businesses
The Canadian Hotel Association believes the hotel industry needs to be high on the government’s list for financial help.
Laid-off workers will be able to access EI benefits, but there are concerns about how quickly the process will work. Grynol says the industry itself needs fast money with flexible terms if hotels are to survive the crisis.
“Right now we’re seeing, you know, some of the early liquidity that was announced through BDC, for example, the lines are jammed, and it’s difficult to get through.”
Globally the hotel industry has never faced a picture so grim.
It all adds up to trouble for tourism and business travel in Canada.
“By the time this is done, if things continue to progress as we suspect they might, we could see somewhere around 250,000 job losses,” says Grynol.
“And that’s not in two months from now. That’s in a few weeks from now.”
Behind the big brands: small businesses and workers
While the hotel business is one of global brands, in this country behind those corporate logos, 87 per cent of the industry is owned by small businesses.
Among those small businesses are also independent operations like Accent Inns and Hotel Zed of B.C..
Hotel chain CEO Mandy Farmer, whose company owns Accent Inns in B.C., fears she will have to lay off 70 per cent of her staff. (Submitted)
Covering eight locations in all, the two small chains are owned by the Farmer family and employ 250 people.
CEO Mandy Farmer says bookings began slipping as early as January when COVID-19 emerged in China. In February, things got worse.
“And then, just in the last couple of weeks, we have seen an absolute stop to all business,” says Farmer.
While they still have some guests, the future’s a bleak picture.
“When I look forward on the books, when I look to April, May, June, there’s nothing. There’s no business.”
In the summer, she’s normally at 90 per cent occupancy.
“So that’s why this is also such a dire situation is because we’ve just come through winter. That’s when we usually use up our cash reserves. And now we’re heading into summer, which is when we plan to make money.”
Farmer has already started cutting staff, and cut her own salary in half. Her family partners are taking no payment.
Farmer fears she’ll have to lay off up to 70 per cent of her employees.
Amanda Hazen was recently laid off from her reception desk job at the Accent Inn in Victoria. She’s applied for employment insurance and is worried about COVID-19 spreading in Canada. (Submitted by Amanda Hazen)
Amanda Hazen was one of the first to be let go. She’d been working the front desk at the Accent Inn in Victoria for two years.
She’d already volunteered to go down to part-time hours to help the company.
Now she’s applying for EI.
Hazen is fortunate her husband has a stable job. Beyond losing her income, she’s more worried about people she loves getting sick.
“I don’t know what the world is going to look like tomorrow. It’s scary.”
This week Naden Abenes was laid off from downtown Vancouver’s Hyatt Regency.
A room attendant, she’d worked in the hotel’s housekeeping department for 12 years.
She says the almost 650-room hotel is at five per cent occupancy, which means there is only work for three or four cleaners.
Naden Abenes, bottom left, at a union rally with other Vancouver hotel workers in October, 2019. She was recently laid off from her job with Vancouver’s Hyatt Regency after 12 years with the company. (Submitted by Naden Abenes)
With a normal guest count there could be more than 40 cleaners on the job.
A volunteer rep with Unite Here Local 40, a hotel workers union, Abenes says older workers who have seniority are afraid for their health if they stay at work. And everyone is worried about how to pay the bills.
“We are depending on the government and our employer to step up to help us,” says Abenes.
Worldwide damage
On Friday IHG announced it would reduce costs by $150 million to deal with the crisis, including cutting executive salaries, halting renovations and slashing marketing budgets.
The company, which owns the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, and Regency brands, operates more than 5,900 hotels worldwide. It expects revenue to drop by 60 per cent in March alone.
Earlier this week the world’s largest hotel chain, Marriott International, which has 7,300 properties and 1.4 million rooms around the world, predicted it would be temporarily laying off tens of thousands of staff members, from managers to housekeepers.
Marriott plans to maintain workers’ benefits, but in a candid video posted to Twitter, company CEO Arne Sorenson said business in most markets is down by 75 per cent or more.
A message to Marriott International associates from President and CEO Arne Sorenson. <a href=”https://t.co/OwsF14TZgb”>pic.twitter.com/OwsF14TZgb</a>
“COVID-19 is having a worse financial impact on our business than 9/11 and the 2009 financial crisis combined,” said Sorenson, who appeared upset at the need for layoffs.
He added the company is cutting all advertising, and that neither he nor Executive Chairman Bill Marriott Jr. will be taking any salary in 2020.
Numbers are not available for Canada yet, but the American Hotel and Lodging Association says U.S. properties are losing $1.4 billion US a week.
Farmer is looking for all levels of government to find a way to keep hotel operators from going under.
“I would love to see our property tax deferred. That is a huge hit that we pay. Provincially minimum wages start to go up in the summertime. That’s not going to help matters. So I’d love to see a pause on that one as well.” British Columbia is set to raise minimum wage.
Deferred payments on water and utility bills would also help cash flow, says Farmer.
“What we are doing is we are fighting to keep this company alive, so that we can welcome these temporarily laid off people back.
“Most importantly, I need the government to look after my team.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
