From Houston Public Media:
With fewer people going on vacation or work trips, Houston’s hotels have suffered greatly from the coronavirus pandemic.
How badly they have been affected partly depends on which area of Houston they’re in: Those downtown have been hit the hardest, since they largely depend on business and convention visitors.
That’s true for Hotel Alessandra at Green Street.
“We dropped from 60% occupancy to 1% occupancy overnight,” said Nancy Alonzo, corporate director of sales and marketing at Valencia Hotel Group, which operates the Alessandra.
When the virus first came to the U.S., she wasn’t too worried, she said.
“Mayor Turner wasn’t really too upset or too crazy about it yet,” Alonzo said. “He did not want to cancel the rodeo but then it just came down to that and then at that point we knew things were going to start and honestly every day from there we could see $60,000 drops every day.”
She said the hotel lost more than $480,000 in group business, and at times was down to 0% occupancy.
Still, Alonzo said, they didn’t shut down the hotel.
“We closed down our food and beverage menus, just made sure that we’re adherent to all the guidelines,” she said. “And we still had availability, so people, you know, honestly one or two rooms maybe during the week and that was it, but I love that we stayed open.”
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