If you need a hotel room in Cape Girardeau -- or anywhere else in the nation -- you should have no problem getting a reservation.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, business and leisure travelers alike are canceling hotel reservations, leaving the majority of rooms unsold night after night.

"We have zero staying and zero coming," an employee of one national chain hotels told the Missourian Friday, adding, "this has never happened before, and I've been here four years."

At another Cape Girardeau hotel Friday only 10 of its more than 130 rooms were occupied.

The story was the same at the next hotel the Missourian called where the manager said coronavirus "has drastically affected our occupancy across the board."

Everywhere in America, innkeepers are struggling to keep their doors open in the face of the coronavirus outbreak as millions of would-be travelers cancel or postpone trips and are staying home instead, either voluntarily or by state mandate.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association estimates since mid-February the U.S. hotel industry has lost $2.4 billion in room revenue and that a million hospitality employees have either lost their jobs or will soon be unemployed in the coming weeks. That number balloons to 3.9 million when combined with indirect job losses at companies that provide goods and services to the hotel industry.

It's estimated in Missouri more than 17,000 hotel workers have joined the ranked of the unemployed because of the pandemic.

That number rises to well more than 50,000 when secondary job losses are factored in.

In a statement released last weekend, AH&LA president and CEO Chip Rogers estimated half of all the nation's hotels would close by the end of this month and many major hotel chains were making contingency plans to cope with occupancy declines. Those plans range from delaying or canceling hotel construction and room renovations to reducing employee hours and staff layoffs.

Drury Hotels, which originated in Southeast Missouri and is now headquartered in St. Louis, has reportedly furloughed or laid off about 200 of its 1,000 corporate employees. According to a report published last week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that number included 15 laid off staff members and 16 furloughed employees out of 109 people employed at the company's Cape Girardeau office. Although he did not verify the reported numbers, Drury Hotels chief operating officer Eric Strand confirmed there have been layoffs.

"As travelers stay close to home during this period of uncertainly, demand for hotel rooms has dropped to unprecedented levels," Strand said in a statement to the Missourian. "As a result, we have made the difficult decision to reduce staffing levels at our hotels and corporate offices."

The company said it is offering discounted room rates at its 100-plus hotels "to support medical professionals, our military and others engaged in the collective effort to help those in need and to keep us all safe."

At Midamerica Hotels Corp. in Cape Girardeau, vice president of operations John Echimovich described the situation as "a devastating blow to the hospitality market as a whole," adding "cancellations for the next couple of months are coming across day by day and we have a major challenge in front of us as an industry."

Midamerica Hotels operates three lodging facilities on Cape Girardeau's west side -- Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites and Auburn Place Hotel & Suites. Their proximity to Interstate 55, Echimovich said, has helped the hotels keep some rooms occupied by travelers on their way home to ride out the virus outbreak.

Although he confirmed Midamerica Hotels' occupancy rates are running "at a significant percentage decrease from the same time last year," he said the company has not laid off employees.

"We haven't moved into any layoffs, but we are in an area where a large volume of our team members are experiencing reduced hours because of a lack of business," Echimovich said. "The fewer rooms we sell, the fewer rooms we need to clean every day."

'Is Your Pool Open?'

"We've been getting calls from people wondering if our pool is open," a front desk worker at one of Cape Girardeau's larger hotels said. "It sounds like parents are wanting to bring their kids."

The hotel speculates parents are looking for ways to occupy their children while schools are closed due to COVID-19.

"The problem is there can only be 10 or fewer people in the pool," the employee said, "so we may have to start a system for families to sign in for an hour at a time if more than 10 people want to use it. I'm assuming at some point we will close the pool."

Event Cancellations

At the Cape Girardeau Convention & Visitors Bureau, also known as Visit Cape, executive director Brenda Newbern focuses much of her attention filling the Cape Girardeau's 1,009 hotel rooms by bringing events, conferences and large groups of people to the city.

"Everything we do is focused on bringing people to Cape and to bring them together, but right now we can't do that" she said, alluding to the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people maintain "social distancing" and not gathering in groups.

Newbern said many events scheduled in Cape Girardeau in April and May are being postponed until later in the year when, hopefully, the coronavirus outbreak will subside.

"Most of the events I've been in touch with are not canceling," she said. "Most of them are rescheduling or they have put their events into a 'holding pattern' until we know what happens" with the disease spread.

Cape Girardeau is not alone, Newbern said.

"I just got off the phone with one of my counterparts in the Hannibal (Missouri) area and it's the same there," she said. "This is something we've not experienced before. A different time. It's surreal."

But although the tourism and hospitality industries are taking a hit, Newbern said, "We've got to stay positive. We will come out of this stronger and better than ever. We're going to be all right."

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