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<\/p>\nWhen Long Beach schools closed in spring, the Hotel Maya began offering harried parents day rate rooms complete with desks, Wi-Fi, pool privileges (i.e. P.E.), boxed lunches and a \u201crecess\u201d that gave kids cookies and milk and moms\/dads chips, guac and margaritas.<\/p>\n
Last month, with the Dodgers in the World Series but many fans unable to watch the games at their favorite sports bars, Holiday Inn Long Beach Airport converted, for the first time, its outdoor pool and courtyard into a viewing area offering not only big screen TVs, but bacon wrapped hot dogs, street tacos and full bar.<\/p>\n
Over the past six months, area hotels, decimated by the near-standstill in business and leisure travel, have offered special rates on accommodations, food packages and converted rooms to \u201coffices\u201d for those suffering work-at-home cabin fever.<\/p>\n
All businesses in that broad swath called hospitality have had to approach the challenges of the pandemic with equal parts creativity and desperation. Countless restaurants have gone alfresco and retail centers such as 2nd & PCH are offering outdoor movie nights. Cultural organizations ranging from the Aquarium of the Pacific to the Museum of Latin American Art to venues such as Alex\u2019s Bar have quickly had to package content online ranging from academic to artistic to EDM.<\/p>\n
But while the aforementioned have had to shift how<\/i> they do business, local hotels have also had to shift who<\/i> they do business with, and that who is you.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve totally shifted from corporate travel from other areas, travelers from other places to being completely local, everything coming within a drive distance,\u201d said Allison Lesser, Hotel Maya\u2019s director of sales and marketing. \u201cWe\u2019ve had to come up with creative ways to sell our rooms: day rates, the packages, leisure, it\u2019s all become completely locally focused and we\u2019ve become more creative about how we go after that market.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reason for the shift in focus is simple. While local restaurants, bars and museums do have their share of tourist business, the large chunk of their revenue comes from local residents. But big, corporate hotels are beholden to customers who come from out of the city, state or country, business and leisure travelers, two segments that basically have not existed for the past six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever in Hilton\u2019s 101-year history has our industry faced a global crisis that brings travel to a virtual standstill,\u201d said Christopher Nassetta, Hilton\u2019s chief executive during the summer.<\/p>\n
The Hilton Downtown, which reacted to hard times by hosting an outdoor summer movie series that was met with such enthusiasm, the weekly event has been extended through the holiday season. Now, you\u2019ll not only be able to see how the \u201cGrinch stole Christmas,\u201d Dec. 1, but do it while enjoying apple cider, hot cocoa, S\u2019mores and, yes, a full bar. (It is<\/i> the happiest time of the year.)<\/p>\n
Imran Ahmed, general manager of the Long Beach Marriott near the airport and chair of the Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, said talk about shifting focus to locals began among his colleagues almost immediately. At his own hotel, he and his sales staff soon began targeting locals aggressively on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started offering special deals and once we saw the needle going north, we decided to expand our efforts in neighboring cities, Orange County and LA,\u201d Ahmed said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He found that the most likely to react were young families; moms and dads either desperately looking for something to do with the kids or desperately looking to escape the little darlings, if only for a night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did get people who just wanted to get out and not cook, not clean, because that\u2019s all some of them were doing: cooking, cleaning and going back to cook the next meal,\u201d Ahmed said.<\/p>\n
While offering people a respite from a redundant existence, local hotel managers say that offering those people something to do, something unique outside of the usual, daily routine, is key. Simply dropping room rates has proven ineffective, they say, because if someone\u2019s concern about being in a hotel is about safety, taking $20 off their daily bill isn\u2019t going to change their mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone started panicking in the beginning and lowering the rate,\u201d said Holiday Inn general manager Mooyon Kim. \u201cBut actually, it\u2019s never been about the rate. It\u2019s about giving people a level of confidence, about offering them something they can\u2019t get elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lesser says the Maya\u2019s \u201cMinimony\u201d package that allows for up to 40 people, socially distanced, to celebrate weddings, anniversaries, etc., has met with success.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny opportunity we have, we want to figure out how we create something that will attract people to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
How many more things they will have to come up with remains to be seen and could very well be determined by forces outside their control. Given the success of his World Series event, Kim said he was considering hosting weekly football games on Thursday and Monday nights, but gave up on the idea when he heard of a possible new wave of COVID.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought it could be a good, consistent social event for us, but we decided not to execute it for now,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to cause any trouble in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
While all hotel management are looking for ways to ride things out, however long that takes, Kim has turned some of his thinking to what comes after. Convinced that his hotel will never fully get back all the business travel it lost\u2014it made up about 80% of revenue\u2014Kim made the decision to embrace the telecommuting that will make much of it unnecessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to invest in technology so we can offer local people the ability to have virtual meetings and conferences here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to keep finding new reasons, new ways to give people a reason to keep using us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though finding what those things are could prove challenging, seeing as how this is all rather uncharted territory. Ahmed, who\u2019s been in the business nearly 40 years, said he and his colleagues would like to follow the trends but, \u201chere we have no trends, no time frame. We have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if there was anything, anyone, any agency could do to help his industry and his colleagues, ultimately get back on their feet, he nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cA vaccine.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Long Beach schools closed in spring, the Hotel Maya began offering harried parents day rate rooms complete with desks, Wi-Fi, pool privileges (i.e. P.E.), boxed lunches and a \u201crecess\u201d that gave kids cookies and milk and moms\/dads chips, guac and margaritas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":71361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31809],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2890],"class_list":["post-21320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","tag-hospitality","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21320"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=21320"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}