‘I have not seen anything like this.’ COVID-19 leaves Bradenton hotels almost empty

Bradenton-area inn keepers, hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, find themselves struggling with too many empty rooms and too few guests.

“Everything is canceling. We have a 28 percent occupancy and we are trying to figure out how to staff. We don’t know where the bottom is,” one hotel insider said Wednesday.

Tourism is the Bradenton area’s No. 1 economic driver with 9,200 short-term rental units, including hotel rand motel rooms, condos, duplexes, and single-family homes.

Local room reservations took a sharp downturn after March 11, according to statistics compiled by Research Data Services, which tracks tourist activity for the Manatee County Tourist Development Council.

That was about the time that Major League Baseball announced the cancellation of spring training, and the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League announced they were suspending play.

Those announcements drove home the gravity of the COVID-19 situation, and people knew that this was a real problem, said Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Prior to March 11, room bookings were running at 90 to 100 percent. Since then, bookings have been fallen to 10 to 30 percent.

“We are projecting an occupancy rate of 15-20 percent for April, but things are changing hourly,” Falcione said.

People who would normally be booking their rooms now for May and June are in a wait-and-see mode, said Kelly Clark, communications director for the visitors bureau.

Nationally, it has been reported the nation’s largest hotel company, Marriott, is planning to layoff tens of thousands of workers around the globe.

Jiten Patel of Holiday Inn Airport, 8009 15th St. E., said that even though his business has been devastated like other hotels, he is not planning layoffs.

“I can tell you in my 25-year hotel career, I have not seen anything like this. One day we go from 100 percent occupancy to 20 percent the next day. This is unprecedented,” Patel said. “We definitely look to our government to support us. We are all in this together.”

Patel said he has talked to his employees to let them know they are valued as part of the team and that he doesn’t plan to lay anyone off.

“But we are cutting their hours and sending them home if nothing is happening. The managers will cover the essential duties,” he said.

Falcione said the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau is letting its members know of assistance available from state and federal levels to hopefully weather the storm.

Once the pandemic passes, the visitors bureau will launch a promotional blitz to feeder markets to the Bradenton area and Manatee County beaches, Falcione said.

“There are so many small businesses in our community. That’s one of the reasons our community is so appealing to visitors. They come for the beaches, No. 1, and they come for the food, No. 2, he said.

In response to the pandemic, the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau has posted information guests should know, as well as local attractions that have been closed. That information is available at https://www.bradentongulfislands.com/covid19.

An Oxford Economic Study shows that 44 percent of hotel employees in every state are projected to have lost or will lose their jobs in coming weeks.

In Florida, there are a total of 747,705 hotel supported jobs. This means an estimated 305,146 employees are facing potential job loss, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association.

This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 4:57 AM with the headline "‘I have not seen anything like this.’ COVID-19 leaves Bradenton hotels almost empty."