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1. Strikes Start at Two More Southern California Hotels
Workers at two hotels in Beverly Hills — the Beverly Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills — joined others in Southern California on the picket line this week, The Los Angeles Times reports. Hotel workers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have been engaging in work stoppages across Los Angeles and Orange counties throughout July.
The union represents roughly 60 hotels, 43 of which have had work stoppages so far. In addition to the Beverly Hills hotels, workers walked out at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel, the Hyatt Regency LAX and the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Hotel Resort & Spa on Monday.
Workers are demanding better wages and benefits, including an immediate raise by $5 an hour with scheduled $3 raises in each year of a three-year contract.
2. How the Tech Collapse Has Hit New York
The New York Times looks at how tech has fueled New York's economy in recent years and how that has led to the loss of thousands of jobs and empty office space around the city.
"New York is doing better than San Francisco — Manhattan has a vacancy rate of 13.5% — but it can no longer count on the technology industry for growth," the newspaper reports. "More than one-third of the roughly 22 million square feet of office space available for sublet in Manhattan comes from technology, advertising and media companies, according to Newmark."
3. Hoteliers, Tour Operators React to Greek Wildfires
The Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu — both tourist hot spots — have been hit by wildfires this week, which has forced hotels and tour operators to pivot to crisis management mode, HNN's Terence Baker reports.
Vacation package company TUI has a particularly large presence in Rhodes, which is a favored destination for British travelers, and press officer Alice Preece said the company's employees on the island “have been working tirelessly to support customers impacted by the wildfires.”
“We have reps in all evacuation centers, and we’re aiming to get more people home from the affected areas as soon as we can,” she added. “We appreciate how distressing and difficult it’s been for those who have been evacuated and ask that they continue to follow the advice of the local authorities and keep in touch with our teams. We have canceled all outbound flights to Rhodes up to and including Friday, July 28, and have also canceled all outbound flights for customers traveling to impacted hotels up to and including on Sunday, July 30.”
4. Stock Market Signals Faith in the Economy
If you're looking for signs of an impending recession, don't look to the stock market, as the Wall Street Journal reports the S&P 500 is in the midst of its strongest rally in more than a year and more Wall Street analysts scale back recession expectations.
“There’s an actual chance here the Fed could stick the landing,” Dryden Pence, chief investment officer at Pence Capital Management, told the newspaper.
5. Wyndham Announces 60 Signed Echo Suites
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts has announced 60 new hotels signings for its new Echo Suites Extended Stay by Wyndham Brand, including the brand's first foray into Canada. Developer Masterbuilt Hotels, which has already developed 24 Microtel properties, has signed on to bring the brand north of the border.
In total, Wyndham's global pipeline sits at 265 hotels with roughly 33,000 rooms.
"Since announcing Echo Suites last year, we've seen unprecedented interest from among the industry's most successful extended-stay developers, helping make Echo the fastest-growing brand launch of 2022," Chip Ohlsson, chief development officer, said in a news release. "Adding Masterbuilt — one of Canada's premier hotel development companies — to that growing list speaks to the quality of the Echo prototype and its highly efficient, ROI-driven design, which offers among the most rentable square-footage in the industry."