Coronavirus Travel News

What's it like being the general manager of a luxury hotel during coronavirus? We asked Franka Holtmann, who looks after Le Meurice for Dorchester Collection. She spoke candidly and poetically about her worries, her new workflows, and how she cares for her team.

Government orders and public health recommendations to stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak sparked a steep decline in foot traffic at U.S. hotels and airports. This plays further into revised forecasts for a devastating 2020 for the travel industry.

It took novel coronavirus to see free organic links from Expedia, Tripadvisor, and Booking.com rise in prominence in Google Search. This isn't necessarily a game changer for the online travel agencies at a time when travel demand is in the tank. It's more like a temporary reprieve from the Google World Order.

The hospitality industry has always fundamentally been about bringing people together creatively. So it makes sense that the lodging sector has been putting together resources online to trade operational insights and to share ways to help their communities.

People are being told to stay in their homes in many areas of the United States. Schools are closed. Is it the right time to be flying?

Airbnb will likely have no trouble raising money, assuming the valuation and terms are palatable to investors, but it's dubious that they will chip in a few hundred million dollars each based on the supposedly inherent advantages of Airbnb's product.

Not all is down-and-out with U.S. companies during the coronavirus outbreak, and furloughed hotel workers could provide much-needed labor in healthcare, grocery, and e-commerce supply chains until the economy gets back to baseline.

Corporate bailouts are never popular with the average voter. But bailing out the cruise industry — which goes out of its way to avoid paying U.S. federal taxes — is proving a particularly hard case to make as the travel industry appeals to Congress for help.