At President Trump’s hotel in Chicago, the most recent board meeting began with bad news. This year’s numbers were awful. Revenue had plunged. The hotel was just 24 percent occupied.
And worse: The hotel expected next year to be bad, too.
In fact, the hotel’s managing director, Gabriel Constantin, said the coronavirus pandemic had hurt the Trump hotel so deeply — reducing business travel and forcing the cancellation of Chicago conferences — that it might be nine years before their business returned to 2019 levels. Continue reading.