Hospitality View: Hotels

Brittney Anderson
Posted: 3/28/2020

Hello Again! Today’s blog post is about how the coronavirus is affecting some hotels here in the United States, and even a little bit about Bruno Mars! Hotels tend to be the face of the Hospitality Industry and are a key force for growth in the industry. But with travel bans nationwide how are hotels surviving?

Let’s take a look at one of the most well-known hotel brand names- Hilton. At franchised and managed hotels across the nation, most operations have been suspended. The Hilton brand hotels that are choosing to stay open are only offering limited operations and reduced services. On the corporate level many upper level employees are taking pay cuts. For example, the executive committee is taking a 50% pay cut for the duration of the crisis and the president and CEO, Christopher Nassetta will forgo his salary for the rest of 2020. Since so many employees are out of work, the Hilton Workforce Resource Center is directing employees’ access to more than 500,000 temporary jobs (Amazon, CVS, etc.) and are hoping to have team members back after the pandemic. On top of Hilton taking these positive steps internally, they are also using their resources to help the community externally. For example, “Hilton is assisting local and national governments to provide housing for first responders and health care workers.”

Another very famous hotel brand name is MGM Resorts International. You will find a lot of these resorts in Las Vegas, Nevada, which as you probably know, is on lockdown in efforts to stop the spread of the Coronavirus. So, while most front and back of the house employees are not able to work right now, the MGM Resorts Foundation is hard at work. 

The MGM Resorts Foundation has an Emergency Grant Fund and Children’s Medical Support Fund. This fund is designed to offer short-term assistance to MGM employees and their families especially during this time. MGM Resorts International has also pledged $1 million for an Employee Emergency Fund, as well as, has donated an equivalent of 400,000 meals across America. Many people love this brand whether they are workers, visitors, or even performers of MGM. Bruno Mars is one of those performers. Mars has pledged to donate $1 million to the MGM Resorts Foundation.

You can read further about the steps Hilton is taking due to COVID-19 or more about MGM Resorts Foundation. See Hilton's Corporate Response to COVID-19. See MGM's pledge to employees. And Bruno Mars support for MGM Resorts.