As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on the lodging sector, the Omni Berkshire Place hotel in Manhattan will close for good.
The announcement, made to loyalty members, came from the Midtown hotel’s parent Omni Hotels, which is owned by billionaire Robert Rowling’s TRT Holdings, Bloomberg reported.
TRT Holdings plans to keep the 399-room hotel property, which is in the rezoned Midtown East district and could be converted to office space. In 2017, New York City overhauled Midtown East’s outdated to encourage office development and renovation.
After stay-at-home orders were issued in March in response to the coronavirus, hotel occupancy rates in the city fell to as low as 15 percent — even as many hotels shuttered and were removed from the metric. Omni has also temporarily closed its hotel in Chicago.
National occupancy rates rose to 36.4 percent in the first week of June.
Occupancy rates in New York City improved slightly in May. But after raucous protests were met with a curfew in the first week of June, New York City saw occupancy tick down to 47.1 percent from 47.6 percent in the last week of May. Revenue per available room, a key metric for performance, also fell, from $59.41 to $57.77.
New York City, where hotels were used to temporarily house homeless people as Covid-19 spread through the shelter system. was one of just seven of the top 25 markets in the country where occupancy surpassed 40 percent, including Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Phoenix and Philadelphia. [Bloomberg] — Georgia Kromrei