While travel in general is expected to increase in 2016, according to a recent survey from The Go Group, projections by both leisure and business travelers were lower after the 13 November attacks on Paris.
Overall, 34% of the 1,190 respondents stated they plan on more leisure travel and 24% more business travel compared to 2015. However, before 13 November, 39% said they planned on traveling more for leisure. This number dropped to 35% afterward. Twenty-eight percent planned on traveling more for business in 2016 before the Paris attacks; after, 25% said they planned on traveling more.
The biggest changes were in the percentage of people who weren't sure about travel in 2016, according to the survey. Before the Paris attacks, 16% and 26% were unsure of leisure and business travel, respectively. Afterward, 21% and 29% were unsure.
Carl Berquist, Marriott’s EVP and CFO for the past seven years, will retire as CFO on 31 December 2015, remaining with the company as a special adviser through March 2016, according to a company news release. Leeny Kelly Oberg, a 16-year Marriott veteran, and current CFO for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, will become Marriott’s chief financial officer on 1 January 2016.
Oberg, 55, assumed her current position at Ritz-Carlton in 2013. Previously, Oberg served in a range of financial leadership positions with Marriott, according to the release. From 2008 to 2013, she was the company’s SVP of corporate and development finance.
Much of Beijing shut down Tuesday after the Chinese capital’s government issued its first red alert for pollution, closing schools and construction sites and restricting the number of cars on the road, according to a report from CNN. Beijing's Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection warned that severe pollution would affect the city for several days.
According to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the air quality index stood at 250 Tuesday morning, classified as “very unhealthy” and 10 times higher than the World Health Organization's recommended levels.
The vast number of issues to resolve will slow the introduction of U.S. hotel brands into Cuba once they are permitted to operate there, writes HNN’s Jeff Higley.
Once the country is open for business to American companies, firms face challenges, including financing, banking, government partnership, dispute resolution and the inflexible labor market, according to Simons Chase, a former investment banker who now serves as editor-in-chief of Cuba Journal.
“There are companies in Cuba today tackling every one of those,” Chase said. “It’s not easy, but they’re doing it because there’s nowhere in the world where there’s visibility on 3, 4, 5 times growth.”
Chase said an additional problem is that Cuba has no lending capacity because it doesn’t belong to the World Bank Group or the International Monetary Fund.
Additionally, sources said the lack of reliable data for key hotel performance indicators is a big hurdle to clear.
Flooding in Chennai has been ongoing, and hotels in the city have been running at full occupancy, according to a report in The Economic Times. However, hoteliers fear they might run out of supplies soon if the situation doesn’t improve.
Arushi Gupta, head of PR and marketing at the Leela Palace in Chennai, told the media outlet that locals have been trying to book rooms and hotel guests have extended their stays. She said about 50 rooms were booked by Citibank executives who were in town and 50 executives from Paypal checked in, taking the hotel’s occupancy to nearly 100%.
“We have enough supplies at the moment,” Gupta told The Economic Times. “But the worry is that we could run out of cooking gas, and no new supply is forthcoming in this situation.”
Compiled by Alicia Hoisington.