Corporate Travel
Loews CEO Tisch: US did a “good job of killing” hotel business
Jim Tisch, the leader of Loews Corp., said the U.S. did a “good job of killing” the hotel business by lambasting corporate travel and hurt American International Group Inc.’s ability to return bailout funds by curbing pay.
“The criticism that took place of group travel was really a death knell for the industry,” Tisch said yesterday in an interview at an office of the New York-based holding company, which owns hotels. “It’s easy for the politician to get the sound bite. What they are doing with those sound bites is putting maids and bellmen out of work.”
Loews’s hotel unit posted a $34 million loss in 2009, compared with a $40 million profit in 2008. Tisch, the chairman and chief executive officer of Loews, said group travel comprises about half the firm’s hotel business, and operations suffered as lawmakers disparaged corporate trips amid the $700 billion rescue of financial firms. In 2008, bailed-out AIG canceled about 160 events costing a total of $80 million.
Loews’s fourth-quarter average room rates fell 14 percent from the year-earlier period to $217. Occupancy decreased to 61.6 percent from 65.8 percent, Loews Chief Financial Officer Peter Keegan said yesterday in a conference call.
President Barack Obama last year said companies receiving aid should curtail travel and pay. “You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you’ve paid taxpayers back,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in February 2009. “You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Comments
Loews’s hotel unit posted a $34 million loss in 2009, compared with a $40 million profit in 2008.
So why didn't they bank some of the $40M in profit for a rainy day?
Maybe the hundreds of millions Mr. Tisch takes home can serve to rescue his lousy business.
And tell him to quit whining. While he screws folk for over $200 big ones a NIGHT to stay in his bed bug ridden rooms, he sneers at the President for trying to wake him up to the fact that he and his ilk have crashed the American economy.
Then let him work as a maid for a year in one of his hotels and live on their earnings while he's at it.
To every thing there is a season...and this is not the season for lavish and opulent corporate events especially by companies whose financial shenanigans almost shattered the country's financial stability and had to receive government bail-out money to survive
HotelPlanner.com agrees with Mr. Tisch. Support group and individual travel to get our economy moving again.
Do you suppose the Loew's loss had an effect on Mr. Tisch's bonus? Welcome to the club, Mr. Tisch.
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