17 February 2009
Hospitality Lawyers with the latest reports on what is happening at hotels in the U.S. and Europe.
It is always great to get the global perspective from Mark Woodworth of PKF Consulting (see Latest insights from JMBM’s Hotel Attorneys and PKF Consulting on what lies ahead for the hotel industry) and Mark Lomanno of STR, but that is only one perspective.
Here is what the hospitality attorneys of JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® are hearing from “the field” in real time . . .
15 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers ask: How do we pay for this? And what happens next?
We are all in a panic to get this “crisis” over. It can’t happen too soon. We are resolved to pay “whatever it takes” to do it, but up to this point, our leaders have not given us any detail to show us what they are thinking or whether any of it will work. But with people beginning to look at other currencies to replace the dollar as reserve currency of choice, we have to wonder a bit about our direction.
14 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers on the Bank Bailout bill and implications for the hotel industry. With Senate approval late Friday night, Congress has now approved the bailout bill. President Obama’s approval is a foregone conclusion. But the details of the bailout plan still worry businesses around the country.
11 February 2008
Hotel Lawyers looking for liquidity in hotel finance. As Congress reached a $789.5 billion compromise on the almost stimulus bill, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner testified for a second day in front of a Senate panel and was pressed to reveal more details on how the Administration’s program would work.
It still looks like a “black box” where no one knows what’s going on inside. This won’t help solve the problem.
10 February 2008
Hotel lawyers on the continuing financial crisis. A few minutes ago, on a 61-37 vote, the U.S. Senate approved an $838 billion package to attack the financial crisis. Negotiations will now start to strike a compromise with the House.
Meanwhile, Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s greatly anticipated unveiling of the administration’s bailout plan details left the markets and many expert’s flat. Expecting more detail on exactly how the plan would work, “investors greeted Mr. Geithner’s speech with dismay and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 300 points” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s what we know.
9 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers contemplating the cleanup ahead. Today and tomorrow may either mark a turning point for economic recovery or just another ledge we bounce off before we plunge into a deeper abyss.
6 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers: It’s not getting any better yet. The New York Times announced this morning that almost 600,000 jobs were lost in January 2009, bringing total unemployment in the U.S. to 7.6%, the highest level in 16 years. The government also revised estimates of job losses for prior periods, adding another 400,000 job losses to prior estimates.
This brings the total job losses since December 2007, when the recession began, to more than 3.6 million jobs. Just to put that in perspective, the 2007 census said the entire population of Los Angeles was only 3.8 million people. So our job losses over the last 13 months are now almost as big as the City of Los Angeles.
What are the ramifications of that for the hospitality industry?
5 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers at “The conference of doom and gloom”
The ALIS conference this year was as glum as I can recall. You would have to go back to 1991 and 1992 at the old UCLA and NYU conferences to find a similar mood. Compared to the record attendance of more than 3,200 at last year’s ALIS conference, the attendance of 1,700 was a good showing, but obviously reflected a lot of cutbacks.
4 February 2009
Hotel lawyer in Beverly Hills at the ULI “Reinventing Retail and Mixed-Use” program, the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hills, California, February 4-5, 2009. The Urban Land Institute’s big retail conference is underway and one of the lead off panels had some great information about why hotels are being added to retail mixed-use projects.
2 February 2009
Hotel Lawyers with the pulse of the hotel industry from ALIS. Mark Woodworth of PKF Consulting shared his latest analysis of the hotel industry with us, as well as his slides from the ALIS conference. The picture is not pretty. Mark says, that if you’re waiting for the recovery, the key word is “PROTRACTED.” Here are the details.
