Crain’s New York Business: To warm up January, 110 city hotels offer major discounts By CARA EISENPRESS January 4, 2022 2:04 PM New York City’s hotels are hoping that a substantial across-the-board discount will entice winter travelers to the city—helping make up for a chilly business climate in December. More than 100 hotels are offering a 22% discount on standard room rates from today until Feb. 13—right before Valentine’s Day. NYC & Company, the city’s marketing organization, is running the promotion. The hotels participating include the Beekman Hotel, Lotte New York Palace, the Pierre New York in Manhattan and the William Vale in Brooklyn. This is the first time that NYC & Company has put its weight behind the discount incentive and combined it with a handful of other citywide programs that will begin Jan. 18: NYC Restaurant Week, NYC Broadway Week and NYC Must-See Week. It’s all part of a coordinated effort to support and celebrate hospitality and tourism, which have been slow to recover. The hotel discount, in particular, may be an important boost for to what is traditionally a slow month, likely made slower by the resurgence of Covid-19 cases. By the time the discount is over, said Hotel Association President Vijay Dandapani, “I think we’ll be back where we were pre-omicron.” The wide-ranging offering also helps individual hotels avoid the appearance of needing to offer discounts to fill rooms—a blow to high-end brands, Dandapani said. “Generally, they don’t discount,” he said. “It’s like going to Per Se—you’re not going to get a discount there.” Despite the lower rate, services at the hotels will not be at 78% of their normal level, Dandapani said. “You get the whole thing,” he said. In some typical pre-pandemic years, average hotel room rates dropped by more than $100 between December and January, Dandapani said. Occupancy would usually fall—going from around 85% in December to less than three-quarters full in January, he said. Last year was a minor exception, as the city’s recovery began to accelerate in January 2021, with both room demand and average revenue per available room steadily climbing from the beginning of the year through July. December was also unusual. The month started off with promise. Visitors flocked to holiday offerings and Broadway shows, and they filled up hotels:The weekend of Dec. 10 had the highest occupancy of the post-March 2020 era. Almost immediately thereafter, however, would-be tourists canceled trips as Covid-19 cases increased and organizers called off performances and events. Occupancy dropped by 20 percentage points between that week and the week ending on Christmas, Dandapani said. Going into the new year, NYC & Company believes it can promote tourism through this program and ensure the safety of New Yorkers and visitors, said Fred Dixon, president and CEO of NYC & Company. “NYC Hotel Week … encourages visitors and New Yorkers to safely enjoy some of the city’s finest accommodations during a time with less crowds and more opportunity,” he said.

New York City’s hotels are hoping that a substantial across-the-board discount will entice winter travelers to the city—helping make up for a chilly business climate in December.

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January 7, 2022

Commercial Observer: Sunday Summary: Good Riddance, 2021! January 2, 2022 9:00 AM We finally waved goodbye to 2021, our second year struggling through a global pandemic. While 2021 was definitely a marked improvement over 2020 — we had vaccines and booster shots that let us, albeit briefly, return to some semblance of normalcy — we’re still not out of the woods yet. The omicron variant of COVID-19 has surged, bringing record high daily counts and forcing many companies to delay their long-awaited return-to-office. Apple has temporarily banned in-person shopping at its 11 New York City retail shops, opting instead to allow customers to pick up online orders outside the stores, because of the rise in cases. Banking giant Goldman Sachs, however, is trying to keep its employees in the office with a new Feb. 1 deadline for eligible staffers to get their vaccination booster shots. Omicron has the potential to further disrupt the city’s already reeling tourism industry by keeping visitors away from the Big Apple. Meanwhile, the Hotel Association of New York City fears property taxes could exacerbate the sector’s problems, and in a report found those taxes amounted to 30 percent of hotel revenue in 2020, an increase from the 9.4 percent they comprised in 2019. Things were looking up before omicron reared its ugly head. Manhattan recorded higher levels of office leasing in November compared to pre-pandemic levels while the amount of sublease space kept falling, a CBRE report found. And retail sales during this holiday season jumped 11 percent compared to pre-pandemic numbers in 2019. Speaking of ups and downs, the office market in Washington, D.C., experienced something of a roller coaster ride in 2021, with occupancy levels remaining relatively low at 10 to 30 percent, but still saw deals getting signed. It wasn’t all bad news Despite some of us striking a dour tone, 2021 wasn’t all bad news. There were plenty of deals to raise a glass to. Commercial Observer rounded up the top office leases in both Florida and D.C. for some joyous reading to kick off the new year, along with the largest multifamily deals in South Florida. And, even as real estate firms were getting ready to celebrate the ball drop, they still made sure to put ink to paper for some last-minute 2021 deals. The Durst Organization landed a $127.5 million refinancing for its newly constructed multifamily complex in Astoria, Queens, 10 Hallets Point, from Signature Bank. And Taconic Partners and Nuveen Real Estate ventured to the land of Bruce Springsteen and the Jersey Devil to pick up a warehouse and distribution facility at 1 Cory Road in Morristown, N.J., in a $55 million all-cash purchase. It marked Taconic’s first foray into the industrial sector. Turning our attention to warmer climates, Manhattan jeweler Mish Tworkowski closed his longtime Bond Street shop to make a move to ritzy Palm Beach, Fla. And a Los Angeles court ruled in favor of the city’s Exposition Corridor Transit Neighborhood Plan that would allow about 6,000 new multifamily and condominium units along the Metro Expo Line on L.A.’s Westside. Ring in 2022 with some Q&A’s What better way to get over the New Year hangovers than hearing from some of the experts in the field? CO’s got you covered in that respect. Steve Giralt, the CEO and co-founder of production company The Garage, dished about why he and other creative tenants have flocked to Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, while Chris Burnham, principal of brokerage KLNB, talked about the state of retail in the nation’s capital region last year. Cheers to 2022!

We finally waved goodbye to 2021, our second year struggling through a global pandemic.

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January 7, 2022

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City’s Market Watch: For New York City’s hotels, it’s the most critical time of the yearhotels have navigated one hurdle after the next, and with the holiday season upon us, few are expecting the challenges to end anytime soon. 

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December 10, 2021

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