Posted on 02/10/2010 6:03:51 AM PST by AndyJackson
Jim Tisch, the leader of Loews Corp., said the U.S. did a “good job of killing” the hotel business by lambasting corporate travel and hurt American International Group Inc.’s ability to return bailout funds by curbing pay.
“The criticism that took place of group travel was really a death knell for the industry,” Tisch said yesterday in an interview at an office of the New York-based holding company, which owns hotels. “It’s easy for the politician to get the sound bite. What they are doing with those sound bites is putting maids and bellmen out of work.”
Loews’s hotel unit posted a $34 million loss in 2009, compared with a $40 million profit in 2008. Tisch, the chairman and chief executive officer of Loews, said group travel comprises about half the firm’s hotel business, and operations suffered as lawmakers disparaged corporate trips amid the $700 billion rescue of financial firms. In 2008, bailed-out AIG canceled about 160 events costing a total of $80 million.
Loews’s fourth-quarter average room rates fell 14 percent from the year-earlier period to $217. Occupancy decreased to 61.6 percent from 65.8 percent, Loews Chief Financial Officer Peter Keegan said yesterday in a conference call.
President Barack Obama last year said companies receiving aid should curtail travel and pay. “You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you’ve paid taxpayers back,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in February 2009. “You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Based on the recent election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, I think maybe you have it the wrong way around. If Zero said he preferred Coke to Pepsi, CocaCola would be filing bankruptcy while Pepsi sales would be through the roof.
You mean that the drop in occupancy at high end Manhattan hotels might have more to do with the collapse of the bubble economy than it did with the dictates of our Herr Oberfuhrer.
bump
Corporations that don't want to be publicly ridiculed from the bully pulpit. Corporations that feared being singled out as extravagant in lean times, when in actual fact they abandoned normal business practices that made them successful. They feared Obie would summon his "pitchforks" upon them. Recall that he did tell "greedy corporations" that he was the only thing standing between them and the people armed with pitchforks.
Chicago thug politics of the highest order. Resign now, a**hole.
they have not all done that.....most big oil for example has to operate counter to progressives
my biggest issue with large business is how they stack their boards with minorities and other identity appointments just to escape criticism without regard to merit and they give to every politically correct extortionist who asks from the Ad Council to ACORN
big corporations are actually part of the problem of the insidious nature of progressivism
but not so for smaller businesses like me...we are today what farmers were a few generations back...regular America
Obama is such a hypocritical ass. It was he himself who put the big corporations on the taxpayer dime with his trillion dollar, corporate welfare bailout programs. I used to think that Jimmy Carter was the shallowest, weakest, most liberal and most incompetent President of all time, but Obama has him beat by a country mile. Barak Hussein Obama brings the term "empty suit" to life. If he weren't such a self rightious, arrogant, belligerent ass it would be almost tragic to watch him flail away and drown in his own incompetence. But as it is, I'm enjoying watching him go down in history as an abject failure of the liberal mentality that placed an incompetent bore into the WH just because he's a Black incompetent bore.
Of course, the Ph.ds and Harvard MBAs who made their fortunes sending America's manufacturing base to China, they couldn't care less that the PEASANTS OF AMERICA often can't find decent jobs.
I don’t doubt that there are a few high profile companies that took tarp money and are in the news a lot and hence fear such ridicule, but they don’t amount to much in terms of impact on the travel industry. Unless people believed that Obama was prepared to read from a long list each day of purported ‘travel abusers’ I cannot imagine it has any real impact. I hope that the vast majority of companies don’t start the day by asking ‘what will Obama think?’ A lambasting only goes so far.
That said, this article did remind me to check that my lamb will be defrosted in time for dinner.
Just about every big business in America today. Obama is a narcissistic, tyrant thug who suddenly found himself sitting on what he believes is a throne. He has surrounded himself with other tyrants and thugs, and holds a big majority in both Houses to help back up his thuggery. He has also managed to turn puclic opinion of corporations into one of deep hatred. He knows how to use his power and authority to dominate others. You can see that corporate America fears this ruthless bas-turd, they know they're in his crosshairs and aren't feeling particularly secure there.
“Loews CEO Tisch: US did a “good job of killing” hotel business”
It’s not the U.S. - it’s Barack Hussein Obama.
There is a lot to fear about the policies he wants, from higher cap gains taxes to penalties on financial institutions to more gov’t control of our economy, but finger wagging need only a one finger reply.
Your picture says it all.
My husband and I attended a convention in Orlando last week.
We stayed at a very upscale Hotel and Resort that gave low Convention rates. The main dining room was CLOSED!
The pool’s Tikki Bar was CLOSED!!
A small sports restaurant held less than a dozen at dinner time.
The Dems are ruining life for all the personnel..and they have the gall to say they are worried about the little people! grrrrrr
Except when your mom/grandma is named Pelosi and your aunt/sister/daughter/cousin is named Michelle Obama.
My thought exactly. Dollars to doughnuts that Tisch voted for BO.
It would make me go out and buy Pepsi.
And yet our elected representatives do it all the time.
Start here.
Others forget that Bush was president in 2008 when the decision to bail out AIG was made.
The only problem with trying to pin all of this on Obama, is that the underlying fundamental economic problem was already well in place before he took office. Has he done all the wrong this? Of course. But the right things would not be bailing out James Tisch.
I don’t recall that I stopped eating broccoli when Bush I stated that he was not going to eat his broccoli.
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