By STUART WALDMAN
Since 2020, California’s hospitality sector has struggled to stay afloat amid COVID-19 fear and constantly changing travel restrictions. Despite this lethal cocktail for businesses, the industry has managed to survive, and in some cases even thrive, providing billions of dollars in economic activity and tax revenue and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Travel is once again booming with the hope and comfort that vaccines have brought. I, for one, went to Hawaii with my family last month and have some exciting plans for international travel and staycations in the summer. With millions starting to catch the travel bug, jobs and economic opportunities are being created, and communities are being strengthened.
As always, there are groups who actively try to stop this growth. New policy threats are emerging that will make California’s tourism and convention industry less competitive, hurting small businesses throughout the state who are simply waiting for new customers to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport and Burbank Airport. Certain special interests are working behind the scenes to target hotels, destroy jobs, and rob our communities of critical tax dollars.
There are two ballot measures on the horizon that are putting our economy at risk of slowing down yet again.
First, the Hotel Workers Initiative Ordinance, which would create workload limitations that would triple, yes triple, hotel housekeeping costs. You thought inflation was throwing a wrench in your travel budget? Wait until your hotel room prices catch up with these added costs.
Under this ordinance, hotels would have even more onerous obligations than they already do, requiring daily housekeeping and limiting the square footage workers can clean in a day, among other provisions. Many people, including myself, don’t want daily cleaning to save water, to get extra hotel rewards points, or even to avoid extra contact with others to prevent COVID-19.
Also, the square footage provision would in turn prevent extra work, forcing hotels to hire more staff, cut current employees’ hours, and limit overtime wages. I’ll be honest, we aren’t really sure who this ordinance is trying to help. It’s definitely not the hotels, employees, consumers, or environment.
Under the second measure, the Los Angeles Responsible Hotel Ordinance, it will create a program under which the city’s Housing Department will identify hotels with vacant rooms and refer unhoused families and individuals to such hotels. The ordinance prohibits hotels from discriminating against unhoused people for their participation in this program, or the fact or perception that they are unhoused.
It requires hotels to report the number of vacant hotel rooms and other information to the Housing Department on a regular basis. This would force vulnerable visitors into shared, and potentially unsafe, spaces, and would require hotels to increase security.
I get it, most homeless individuals are just down on their luck, but estimates are around one third of homeless individuals are abusing substances and another third experiencing mental illness. I don’t know about you, but those odds just aren’t something I would want to risk on vacation.
And, by mandating that hotels report available rooms for unhoused Angelenos to occupy, this ordinance will just transfer the pressure to address the homelessness crisis from the government to businesses.
These measures just give our elected officials another excuse as to why they haven’t done their jobs. The city can’t rely on the struggling tourism industry to alleviate homelessness. Instead, they must develop long-term solutions like streamlining the housing development process.
The hotel industry didn’t cause the homelessness crisis, and they shouldn’t be forced to bear the burden of the issues our government has failed to solve.
And, under both proposals, transient occupancy tax revenues would be lost, impacting fire protection, health care, and homelessness programs. So, not only would the government be privatizing homelessness response, but it would be slashing its homelessness budget. Furthermore, they would make it more difficult for hospitality jobs to recover after the pandemic.
More regulations on our travel and tourism industry will place a financial burden on hotels just as the industry is beginning to recover and travelers are beginning to return.
We want to encourage people to come and enjoy our bustling economy, endless summer, world-renowned theme parks, and beautiful scenery, not scare them off with skyrocketing prices and the threat of our homelessness crisis – quite literally – knocking on their hotel room doors.
Los Angeles is dependent on tourism and the economic benefits, customers, and visitors it brings to our city. Don’t let the government ruin it as we are finally getting it back.
Stuart Waldman is president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a business advocacy organization based in Van Nuys that represents employers in the San Fernando Valley at the local, state, and federal levels of government.