Posted on 09/26/2009 12:17:39 PM PDT by george76
This year's summer season was the worst on record for Orlando-area hotels.
the Orlando hospitality market wrapped up the three-month season by filling only 58 percent of its available rooms in August, or 8.9percent fewer than in August 2008. That's the worst August on record since Smith Travel Research started keeping track in 1987. The June and July occupancy rates were also the worst for those months since the hotel-tracking company began conducting its local surveys.
And hotel operators were not able to make up for the empty rooms with higher prices: Room rates were down by double-digit percentages all summer compared with a year ago, including a 14.4 percent drop in August to an average $76.29 a night.
"Rooms that we rented last year for $50, we're now renting for $30," said Rizwan Saferali, owner of the Super 8 Kissimmee Suites on Vine Street. "At the end of the day, we're not really making anything."
they are causing continued pain for local hoteliers and Orlando's tourism-dependent economy. The slump in hotel use has already slowed the pace of downtown Orlando's public-venue construction projects, which are funded in part by a "resort tax" collected from visitors staying in hotels and other short-term lodgings.
The falloff in those tax collections has delayed construction of the $425 million performing-arts center...
Maladecki said he expects September's hotel report to also be the worst on record for that month -- worse even than September 2001, when the terrorist attacks grounded all air traffic for several days and triggered a long slump in travel.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotel-online.com ...
‘Orlando’s tourism-dependent economy’
Having a diverse portfolio works on the Street and in the streets.
Orlando-area hotels are having a lonely summer.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-orlando-hotels-august-092209,0,7466685.story
America is the Magic Kingdom now. No need to go to Disney World anymore.
How many states and cities have gambled big taxpayer dollars on tourism?? Convention centers galore and taxfunded hotels in some of them.
great foresight... NOT
Summer in Orlando can be absolutely miserable because of the heat and humidity. Any other season is better.
I blame Hussein, in the main.
The reporter is kidding, right?
Maybe America is sick of Disney politics....
That is how DUmmie reporters think.
Businesses is down : raise the prices.
Nuts.
Thank goodness Florida doesn’t need the revenue they could get from drilling for oil in the Gulf. They would rather see Cuba get that money. Those empty beaches are pristine, though.
Ah, I thought the recession was “technically” over.
Too much supply means hotels will close. There will be no demand until the bums in Congress and the WH are thrown out.
I avoid the Rat like the plague, but my sister just got a package deal at DisneyWorld that cost the same as when we went there as children in the 1980s.
Let Disney just keep pushing homosexuality...they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Florida has never successfully diversified its economy from leisure and agriculture. You do have a rather tightly-knit financial services center in Miami (largely centered on Private Banking for wealthy Latin Americans) and some tech companies along I-4, but these are not enough to change things. Combine with the fact that salaries in the tourism sector are very low, and some of the worst schools in the United States, and you can see that the Sunshine State is far from being the “paradise” that was sold to the rest of America for many years.
Oh and free use of the Bentley as you go to dinner on Worth Avenue.
Most of these folks are low-skilled people who would rather work than sponge off the system. Hoteliers, as a group, are really good at promoting from within, educating their staff, and providing folks with opportunities to advance based on their work ethic. Contrary to what others have claimed, the hotels VET their staff, and do not use "day laborers." The liability is too high to hire illegals.
This does not include senior level staff (managers, etc.), who usually are college graduates.
As occupancy rates plummet, expect to see a lot more people hitting the unemployment roles.
Local municipalities get a lot of revenue from the hospitality industry. HOT, in certain destinations, contributes substantially to the local budget.
The only other time we saw numbers like this was POST-911.
It's bad, and it's going to get worse. Didn't Bambi's crew claim that the recession is over? BS. Hospitality is the LAST to recover. When their numbers are up again, then it's over.
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