4aks

1300 corporate layoffs

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...KBN22O09P?il=0

txhyattlvr

Sad. More evidence we’ll refer to pre-Covid as “the old days.”

hotelfanatic

Agree. Any travel will not be the same until a vaccine is available. I will do my best to support Hyatt when that day comes.

MSPeconomist

1300 people worldwide out of 55,000 employees doesn't sound as bad as I would have expected, although apparently there have already been pay cuts.

I hope the Glob concierges are retained, unlike what Marriott did to the Ambassador program. Most of them (at least in the USA) work from home and many are part time, so it might be possible to cut hours if there's less demand for their services.

LoungeLizardHugo

I've been booking my Hyatt Global Tour trips like crazy since the "dark depths" of March. Late summer all the way through March 2021. Embarrassed to say how many. Wide open hotel suite upgrade availability, wide open F and J cheap/award flights. Was reviewing my bookings yesterday and shaking my head at the ludicrous goodness of all of them.

Here is what I ask of elected "officials" and those living in fear perpetuated by click-driven media hysteria: How many lives are you willing to sacrifice to prevent one coronavirus death?

Yes, agreed, thankfully a light trimming vs a massive bloodletting. It could have been far worse. Also agreed on Concierges, one of the value propositions Hyatt offers that is HUGE to me. I feel tremendously bad for all the employees who are suffering due to absolutely no fault of their own.

hotelmotel

55,000 includes hotel-level employees, certainly for company-managed hotels, and some companies even include franchise employees in that number. Hyatt has nowhere near 55K corporate-level employees. If I had to guess, they have at most 3-4K. So 1,300 is a massive cut into the above-property workforce.

MSPeconomist

Presumably most of the hotel level employees, at corporate owned and franchise properties, have already been furloughed, laid off, or otherwise let go, and many of the remaining ones would have had their hours reduced. The hotels that are open are operating with skeleton staffs and the ones that are closed need even fewer employees (maybe GM and a c couple security guards depending on the size of the property).

mguinness

I think you meant livelihoods, not lives. On the flip side, how many lives are you willing to endanger for non-essential trips that you got a great deal on?

wrldwide1

You are correct, this is a massive cut and it will drastically change things for those needing to make contact with Hyatt regarding bookings or issues with same..

LoungeLizardHugo

Lives and livelihoods. Unemployment and stress kills just as surely as the virus does. The sooner people acknowledge that fact the sooner we can act on science-based solutions.

I am not endangering anyone as I wear a mask and sanitize/wash my hands. Furthermore, in spite of all the hand wringing and virtue signalling, this virus is going to burn it's way around the world sooner or later. Destroying the worlds financial system will affect and cost so many more lives than the COVID would! Remember, clearly, all the restrictions were initially placed to "flatten the curve" and prevent overwhelming the healthcare systems. Aside from a very few instances (New York), hospitals are actually suffering from a complete lack of patients! The main problem we have now is that all the so-called experts were wrong. The death rate as a percent is far lower (0.03%) than originally claimed. You better shut the world down and stop all driving to prevent car accident deaths! I really resent that reply as you have zero proof of your claim that I am endangering any lives. In fact I am supporting lives in a real and tangible way by spending my tourism money to support local economies, the airline industry, and hotel employees.

Fear kills and baseless fear mongering driven by click-bait media and intellectually-bankrupt "experts" is fueling far more destruction than this virus ever will. You are welcome to cower at home fearful of the world, I'm going to live my life positively affecting others as I do so.

WantOnlinePoker

As of now, the US COVID death count as tallied by Johns Hopkins is 82,806 out of 1,375,949 confirmed Coronavirus cases in the country. For the math challenged, that's over 6%. 0.03% is a great fantasy world though.

LoungeLizardHugo

No one knows the true current infection rate. A multitude of reports document asymptomatic infection rates far higher than the number you used. So your numerator is flat out wrong. The fantasy world is yours with that kind of retort.

LoungeLizardHugo

I'll make one other point and it's one thoughtful and rational people should also consider.

I know one single person who actually had the virus and zero people who actually died from it. I do however know hundreds of people who's lives are being devastated by idiotic "lockdowns". Wearing a mask and washing your hands works, many Asian countries, who have NOT locked down are proof of that (Japan, Vietnam). Facts are facts regardless of what tyrannical political hacks want to shove down your throat.

Use a rapid test when beginning your journey to "unlock" your transportation and then get the hell on with living life.

UA-NYC

This is OT, but your "death rate" quoted would be less than the generally accepted seasonal flu death rate (0.1%)...when it's quite clear CV19 has a higher death rate (not to mention more contagious by ~2x or so).

You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.

oc2005

New York proves your point -- NY state population is roughly 19.5 million, and as of now there have been 27,400+ COVID deaths in NY state. So 0.14% of the entire state population has already died from COVID. Considering 100% of the population isn't infected and there are still currently infected people who are sadly going to die, we know with certainty that the mortality rate (at least of the strain in NY) is greater than that of the seasonal flu, and likely is significantly so.

The problem is there is no good solution yet. We would all love to be out traveling, flying, staying at Hyatts, supporting businesses, etc. but the numbers in NY show the risk in doing that. I agree the economic impact is going to be devastating, but until there are better proven treatments, vaccines, or the ability to really test and trace cases like some other countries do, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.