The Big Apple – A Year Later | The Hotel Experience

NEW YORK, N.Y. – When HX: The News chatted last year with Christian Brosius (pictured), general manager of The Moxy Times Square in midtown Manhattan, things were bleak. In July 2020, there was no way to sugar coat the business climate, with Brosius characterizing occupancy as “very low.”

With nowhere to go but up, occupancy has indeed ascended at The Moxy with Brosius revealing a 68% occupancy rate in June 2021. HX: The News revisited the The Moxy to get a better idea about what has changed, what may stay the same, and what may get worse.

Greg Thompson, editor, HX: The News: The last time we talked, the streets of New York were eerily empty. What’s the vibe in the Big Apple now?
Christian Brosius, general manager, The Moxy Times Square: The city is bustling with people all around. I have some new hires, some new life, and we’re all doing well. I’m not one to really complain. This is the world we are in, and we just need to figure it out. I get to go to work.

Thompson: How’s business at The Moxy these days?
Brosius: It’s really starting to come together. We opened a cafe today in the bar space we have. We’re finishing up the month in which we ran tremendously high occupancy. In June we ran 68% occupancy. It’s not the 90% it used to be, and the rate is clearly not there yet, but it’s definitely looking up. There is life in the hotel. We are busy and we are able to give people jobs—meaningful jobs and not just manning a front desk where nobody checks in.

Thompson: What’s your sense of the mood among your hotel colleagues?
Brosius: There is a lot of positivity. A lot of the hotels have undergone renovations and re-brandings. Some took on government business and now they are coming back into the market as well. The overall feeling in the city is that we are coming back. Weekends are sell-outs across the board. Branded and non-branded hotels in every neighborhood are doing pretty well. It’s all really good news.

Thompson: What’s your short-term outlook?
Brosius: We are cautiously optimistic. You keep one eye on whatever COVID is doing with the Delta variants, but overall we’re in a really good placed compared to where we were last year.

Thompson: What’s the mask situation in New York?
Brosius: We’re in an environment where most people are not wearing masks—that includes employees and guests. People are congregating in bars and night clubs outside of the hotel.

Thompson: How is your on-site bar doing?
Brosius: Our bar is starting to open up and get busier. People are becoming more and more comfortable. We have more than a 70% vaccinated population in New York, so people are probably more comfortable here.

Thompson: What’s the main type of guest you are seeing now and are they ‘high maintenance’?
Brosius: There are two types of traveler now. The majority is leisure-driven—weekend warriors and people who are comfortable with travel. They are coming to see someone and have a good night in the city. We don’t really hear from them. We tend to hear from business travelers who are traveling for the first time in 18 months. Nowadays the well-traveled people are those who travel for leisure and the less well-traveled are the business travelers who used to be road warriors. The business travelers are more cautious because they haven’t gone anywhere.

Thompson: What’s left over from the Marriott sanitation protocols of the pandemic?
Brosius: Everything is left over. We’re doing everything the same as the way we did when COVID started in regards to how we clean. What is not leftover is the mask mandate for employees and guests. The way we clean, sanitize, and sterilize has remained the same. It becomes second nature and it’s normal to see someone spraying things down.

Thompson: What are you seeing on the local subways?
Brosius: In Manhattan, we see a lot of the locals still masking when they are on transit and when they are on the subway and in the subway stations. Outside we do not see a lot of masks—probably only 10% to 15% of people.

Thompson: How much (if any) has the Delta variant impacted business?
Brosius: We have not seen an impact—yet, which is good news. It’s more about what theater markets are going to be impacted and what does it mean for international travel to return? How is the U.K. going to react? What are other countries, organizations, and corporate accounts going to do in response to the Delta variant? My fear is that people are going to get sick again in November and December once it starts getting cold and we’re more confined to indoors. The winter is good for a virus.