Hotel & Motel Management - December 10, 2007 - (Page 42)

42 News H&MM December 10, 2007 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition Wildﬁres Continued from page 4 damage to 45 suites. “We were experienced at this,” Rauch said. “We were able to do crisis management and we didn’t have any difﬁculty evacuating.” Occupancy numbers at the Homewood Suites mimicked a roller coaster during the week of the most recent wildﬁres, Rauch said. On Oct. 21—the day the nearby ﬁre broke out—the hotel began ﬁlling up with evacuees forced from homes closer to the ﬁre, Rauch said. By Monday, it was at 100-percent occupancy. “We were packed with locals by Monday,” Rauch said. “We set up a resident-friendly rate of $39 (compared to the property’s average daily rate of $199). Some of the local residents had all their belongings in the hotel room.” At around 9 p.m. on Oct. 22, Rauch got a call from the San Di- ego Police Department ordering him to evacuate the property. “Our guests were out within one hour,” he said. Most of those who left the Homewood Suites went to Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers football team, where the American Red Cross set up an emergency help center. That day, the ﬁres were four miles away but were zero-percent contained, Rauch said. “There was a lot of fear that the ﬁre wasn’t going to be controlled,” he said. The mandatory evacuations were lifted after two days, but Rauch said his revenue took a major hit that week. Even after the property reopened, most of his business travelers stayed away for the remainder of the week. But Rauch said he housed ﬁreﬁghters and rescue crews at federal government rates, which helped him make back some of his losses. “We sure suffered when we had to close the hotel,” he said. “We probably lost $50,000 that ﬁrst week.” Rauch estimated the Homewood Suites typically does $15,000 to $20,000 a day in sales, so he estimated a loss of more than $30,000 in the two days the property had to close. Over the next ﬁve days, he estimated losses at $5,000 a day. “But we hope to make a lot of it back,” he said. “In the end, we might be out $10,000, but we helped a lot of people.” Kim Acres, g.m. at the West Inn & Suites in Carlsbad, Calif., said the hotel reached 100-percent occupancy. She then set up a waiting list for displaced residents and corporate travelers who could not access their destinations and lowered their rates 25 percent. “We didn’t sleep the ﬁrst 42 hours,” Acres said of her staff. “We had group meetings every morning.” Acres said the unexpected spike in occupancy ﬁgures won’t skew future projections drastically. “It was a trade-off because the following week we still had a lot of cancellations,” she said. Also, Acres doesn’t think a ﬂuctuation in insurance rates following the wildﬁres will deter development in Southern California. Rauch agreed, saying insurance companies look at long-term models, so one speciﬁc event won’t spike insurance costs too much. “It might even have been higher before the ﬁres because all the fuel is burned now,” he said. “We’re surrounded by green fairways and that really helped.” By the ﬁrst of November, the San Diego North Convention and Visitors Bureau reported the reopening of all hotels and attractions in the resort region. jfreed@questex.com Under Construction The Generation Cos. LLC recently broke ground for Candlewood Suites/Destin (Fla.), a mid-priced 75room extended-stay suite hotel. The $8.23-million construction project will open in March 2008. Compiled by Stacey Higgins, shiggins@questex.com http://www.HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition http://www.thehoteltimes.com ssilver@questex.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - December 10, 2007

Table of Contents News Wildfires test hotels' emergency plans LIIC roundtable: Capital available for hotel projects Departments Perspective Letters to the Editor At Your Risk Family Business Matters Sales Clinic On Finance Satisfaction Trends HotelWorld Update Events Trends & Stats Special Report H&MM's "year in review" tackles the top seven in 2007 Transactions Consumer Insight Travelers rank free breakfast high on must-have items Hot Products IH/M&RS Editors' Choice Award winners Construction Spending up, costs steady in construction Design Window treatments Ad/Editorial Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - December 10, 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.