LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Despite reopening in late August, Louisville’s Omni Hotel still hasn’t rehired the majority of its pre-pandemic workforce consisting of about 450 full- and part-time employees.
The hotel told Kentucky officials in a letter dated Sept. 17 that it continues to furlough 294 workers who lost their jobs in March, with no rehire date in sight.
The hotel had to write the letter to comply with a federal law requiring mass notice of layoffs expected to last six months or more. At first, the Omni hoped it would be able to rehire the employees within six months.
“Regrettably, it now appears that the length and severity of the direct effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business operations are greater than previously were foreseeable,” Omni general manager Scott Stuckey said in the letter made public Monday. “As a result, we have had to reassess our initial understanding of the circumstances facing the Hotel.”
The letter lists the positions affected – servers, bartenders, cooks, room attendants and accounting personnel, among others.
In a statement issued through a public relations firm, Stuckey said, “The pandemic is still with us and tourism will continue to be affected for some time. We are managing our workforce to reflect our business needs, and we understand the continued hardship Louisville’s excellent hospitality workers face.”
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Hotel bookings in Louisville's Central Business District have fallen off a cliff in the pandemic, according to figures from STR, a firm that tracks hospitality data. Conventions and business travel has ground to a halt. Protests and civil unrest in the wake of the Breonna Taylor shooting have also kept people away from downtown, the CEO of hotel company Al J. Schneider Co. told WDRB last week.
The slowdown of business at the Omni could be costly for Louisville taxpayers beyond the normal impact of a shuttered hotel.
That's because Louisville borrowed $112 million to subsidize the development of the $300 million hotel, which was completed in 2018, and Metro government owes about $5 million in bond payments each year on the $112 million debt.
If the hotel were running at full speed, most of the $5 million would be offset by state taxes generated at the hotel, which would be redirected to Louisville Metro.
But metro government owes the bond payments regardless of whether the state taxes -- for example, income taxes from hotel workers and room taxes from guests -- materialize.
