Marriott International forced to lay off employees temporarily

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Marriott International, one of the most popular hotel chain in the world announced the hotelier has been forced its tens of thousands of employees to take leave of absence as a result of the impacts with Coronavirus outbreak around the world. The novel coronavirus has gone global reaching most of the nations throughout the world. This outburst in China now becomes a worldwide pandemic. Since it was first identified in mid-December (Wuhan Province in China), the virus has killed more than 7,989 people worldwide. It is also reported that 198,737 confirmed.

Arne Sorenson, CEO of Marriott International said at a roundtable with President Donald Trump said that in the United States in the last couple of days, when any one look at the decline in the reservation and in the cancellation, the total is negative. They are losing the business every day.

At that roundtable discussion, Tuesday afternoon hoteliers including Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott say they are running at an average of 10-15% occupancy around the world.

Christopher Nassetta, CEO of Hilton said that the bulk of their hotels in the major cities are closing as we speak. News 6 spoke with a tourism expert, retired UCF Professor Dr. Duncan Dickson who said he wouldn’t be surprised if those other big hotel chains follow suit.

Dr. Dickson said that they don’t see how they cannot follow suit. Again, when you have no revenuer coming in how do you continue to pay people.

He adds being the largest destination in the nation with 75 million visitors each year, Central Florida will absolutely feel the effects of the furloughs.

Neither Marriott International or VisitOrlando responded to inquiries about the effects the closures could have on our area.

However, News 6 spoke to a Marriott Employee who said right now he is receiving two weeks’ worth of disaster pay at $14 an hour but hasn’t been told anything at the local level about any possible layoffs.

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