NEW YORK — Denise Matthew says her desk looks exactly the same as she left it back on March 18, 2020.

Hotel owners sue NYC over new law requiring severance for workers,

On a nondescript corner in Brooklyn, sandwiched between on-ramps for the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, a long-vacant hotel formerly run by the Jehovah’s Witnesses is starting a new chapter.

New York’s hotel owners are suing the city to stop a new law mandating pandemic-ravaged hotels to pay a weekly severance for its furloughed employees if they remain closed after the end of the month.

A group of New York City hotel owners is suing the city over a new law requiring them to pay workers severance benefits if they were fired under circumstances related to the pandemic.

Domestic tourists are returning to New York City in greater numbers despite concerns over the Delta variant and rising COVID cases. The data affirms the city’s vibrancy, even asinternational visitors remain predominantly sidelined.

The city will use nearly a quarter of its $5.9 billion in federal relief funds for public health initiatives to combat the pandemic, increase accessibility to mental health care and support aging New Yorkers, according to a recently released spending plan.

Crain’s recently brought some of the city’s leaders together to talk about how hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses will recover from the pandemic. Here’s some of what they said.