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1. Staffing Headaches Increase With Rise in COVID-19 Cases
Restaurants, hotel chains, manufacturers and other sectors are finding that "staffing is harder now than at any previous stage in the pandemic" due to BA.5 subvariant of COVID-19 cases spiking and employees taking planned time off this summer, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Data from the Census Bureau shows 3.9 million Americans between June 29 and July 11 missed work due to being sick with COVID-19 or taking care of someone else infected with it. Last year during that time the number was 1.8 million.
Labor Department data shows 4.8 million workers took vacation or personal days during that period, compared with 3.7 million in the comparable months last year.
2. Hong Kong Plans To Cut Hotel Quarantine for Arrivals
Hong Kong's government is planning to shorten its hotel quarantine requirement for arrivals with the introduction of a new health code system, Bloomberg reports.
"The government is considering moving to five days of hotel quarantine, after which arrivals will be issued with a so-called yellow health code for two days that would prohibit them from entering high-risk areas where masks can be removed. Another option under consideration is four days of hotel isolation followed by three days of yellow code restrictions, according to Sing Tao, which cited a person it didn’t identify. Hong Kong currently requires seven-day quarantine for arrivals," the news outlet reported.
3. Recession Talk Expected To Dominate Second-Quarter Earnings
The focal point of the second-quarter earnings season for hotel brand and real estate investment trust is expected to be on the severity of a potential recession, reports Hotel News Now's Trevor Simpson.
“The big focus is macro and not even what's going on now. It's about later in this year and into 2023, which is always hard to see for travel because you know how quickly it can turn off and turn back on,” said Michael Bellisario, senior research analyst at Baird.
4. Singapore's Hotel Room Rates Surge in June
As Singapore continues to ease COVID-19 restrictions, the city-state in June achieved its highest hotel room rates since 2016, Bloomberg reports.
The average room rate during the month was $171, data from the Singapore Tourism Board shows, which is a 63% increase from the previous year and the highest rate since September 2016.
Singapore expects to welcome 4 million to 6 million visitors by the end of this year.
5. Hotel Union Pressures Lawmakers to Limit New Hotel Development
Northern Virginia's local Unite Here labor union is pushing lawmakers to either require higher wages for workers at new hotel openings or to limit new hotels from opening at all, the Washington Post reports.
"We don’t have any good-paying jobs in Alexandria,” said Ismail Ahmed, a member of the union, during a city council meeting.
"And if an on-site hotel couldn’t offer high wages, then city lawmakers should bar any kind of hotel there," the newspaper reports.
Paul Schwalb, the executive secretary-treasurer of Unite Here Local 25, which represents D.C.-area hotels, restaurant and casino workers, added, “Decision-makers need to use their discretionary power to get better deals for their communities. If certain conditions aren’t met, they shouldn’t move forward with development.”