Hotel owner Reggie Winfield is considerably more relaxed talking about his Lafayette property now that the coronavirus pandemic has made its year mark.
Things were way worse at the start of the thing.
Just how bad? Winfield, owner of Windfeel Properties, had rebranded his 50-room boutique hotel at 1015 W. Pinhook Road to Clarion Pointe on March 11 after purchasing the property the previous spring. He gave it a makeover, putting in all new furniture and large TVs with casting ability that required a new fiber optic line to the building.
Just over a week later Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a stay-at-home order, and Winfield’s hotels and others statewide saw business come almost to a halt. Revenue all but ceased. A large number of hotels across the state closed, at least temporarily.
Winfield didn’t want to close his new property, but he all but did so when he furloughed all the staff except security and manned it at times himself. Reservations were so scarce over the next two months that he can now count the total number of them on his fingers and still have some digits leftover.
“I can say this now because it’s in the rear-view mirror: We were leaving the door opened and we didn’t know what would happen,” said Winfield, who said he stayed at the hotel for a couple weeks. “We didn’t know when things would end. I didn’t want to close. Everything in the hotel was brand new. You do what you have to do. I certainly didn’t want to close and board it up. There’s nothing worse than a hotel going dark.”
The headlines have come in bunches regarding the pandemic’s affect the restaurant industry, which did take a hard punch to the stomach, but the punch the nation's hotel industry took may have resembled more of a 1980s-era Mike Tyson blow to the chin. And it’s been among the slowest to recover.
In September about half of hotel owners nationwide said their properties were on the brink of foreclosure, according to a survey from the American Hotel & Lodging Association. By November over 70% said they could only survive six months without any further relief from the federal government. Hilton hotels reported $720 million in losses in 2020.
In Lafayette Parish, gross receipts plummeted as occupancy rates fell to 26% in April and 35% in May, according to data from Lafayette Travel. That forced some hotels to close temporarily, but already this year two full-scale hotels have closed permanently. The Garden Plaza Hotel & Conference Center along with the Wyndham Garden Lafayette, both of which had struggled prior to the pandemic, have been sold and will be converted into apartments.
Statewide about 40% of hotels closed at some point at the start of the pandemic and about 10% remain closed, said Bill Langkopp, executive director of the Louisiana Hotel & Lodging Association. Most of those closures in either New Orleans or Lake Charles.
Activity, however, is starting return. A full recovery might take another two years.
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“We’re seeing progress ever so slowly,” Langkopp said. “In north Louisiana, that I-20 corridor is outperforming south Louisiana. We’re seeing a lot of activity in kids’ sports. It’s going to be interesting to see south Louisiana come back. No conventions or meetings are very slow to recovery. There is a pent-up desire by attendees to get back to those events. It’s going to be some time.”
The Lafayette market has shown signs of recovery thanks largely to the youth sports market and the large facilities in Broussard, Youngsville and Carencro that host them. The biggest boost came during the late summer months when hurricane that belted the Lake Charles area sent most of those residents taking refuge in Lafayette hotels, helping gross receipts top $13 million the months of September and October.
Hotels in the city of Lafayette had their best month not associated with hurricanes in March, data from the Lafayette Economic Development Authority shows.
But higher occupancy on the weekends and some during the week is not enough for Lafayette’s largest and now only full-service hotel, DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. General manager Jimmy Thackston said it has held one large meeting — the Louisiana Health Care Financial Management Association — which ended last week.
The event, which usually reserves 100 rooms for its convention, booked only 40.
“My shortfall is I can’t get back to normal until associations and corporations start traveling again,” Thackston said. “I have so much of a need for meetings. In my case, 300- to 500-person meetings. I just need social distancing guidelines to be relieved. You’re going to see these hotels that don’t have meeting space that are just hotel rooms only — those hotels are probably close to pre-COVID occupancy levels.”
Thackston and others are watching closely what happens with the Louisiana Rural Water Association’s annual conference scheduled for four days in mid-July at the Cajundome Convention Center. That event traditionally means 4,500 room nights and over 1,000 attendees, but how much of them will come this year is undetermined.
The hangup is the state’s social distancing guidelines and how many attendees will be allowed inside the convention center since it's a state facility.
“It will be one of the largest conventions we’ve ever hosted,” said Ben Berthelot, president and CEO of the Lafayette Travel. “If that is able to go off as we hope, then I think it’ll be a really good sign that meetings and convention business is back. We won’t really know until a little closer out what the occupancy is going to be allowed for the event. I’m really looking forward to if that’s able to happen, and then I’ll have a much better feeling for the second half of the year.”
The DoubleTree will serve as the event’s host hotel, and by then Thackston hopes to have more people on staff to handle the influx of business. Staffing, much like other industries currently, is a significant hurdle right now that he’s hoping to address some during a Hospitality Job Fair May 18.
The hotel, which at its peak employed 135 full-time workers, now has about 50 full-time workers and another 20 part-timers.
“We have very few people working in food and beverage because there’s no need,” he said. “An event like I had (last week), I had to find 10 people to work one day. I don’t know when the next time I’ll be able to call them will be. That’s good work for students and people who have other full-time jobs.”
Back at the Winfield’s Clarion Pointe hotel, he’s had to reach out to staffing agencies to fill his workforce needs while also offering housekeepers a starting wage $12 an hour along with a $150 signing bonus after 90 days.
A New Orleans real estate company will rebrand a mid-sized Lafayette hotel after buying the property in late February.
It’s not so much that furloughed employees are staying on the sidelines and taking unemployment pay. Many can’t return to work due to family responsibilities or have moved on to other jobs or careers, Langkopp said.
But more business will mean more employees. Winfield has noticed an uptick on the weekends, but that midweek activity from events and festivals is still missing. Fall football games at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette that allows more capacity will help, as would a normal fall schedule of festivals, which he said accounts for 20% of the hotel’s revenue.
“We just have to wait it through and see what happens,” Winfield said. “And be patient. Hope that some of our creditors have the same patience they had last year. We’ve seen some hotels close and not make it. It hurts me to see it as a hotelier, even though they may be a competitor. You don’t want to see anyone close, but it happens.”
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