ST. LOUIS — The quiet sidewalks, empty patios, and vacant parking spaces aren’t supposed to be what downtown St. Louis looks like this weekend, following what should have been the Opening Day at Busch Stadium.
“You’re not kidding,” laugh Amrit and Amy Gill. “Although we still are looking forward to some Cardinals Baseball.”
“This would have been an extremely busy month for us,” Amrit said. “Not only were we sold out, but every hotel downtown was sold out.”
But with the season and everything else postponed or canceled, the only red the owners of Hotel St. Louis are seeing right now is in their bottom line.
“It’s in the millions of dollars,” Amrit said. “For a typical hotel like Hotel St. Louis, the revenue per month in you know March, April, May, June, is typically seven figures. And so that revenue is basically gone.”
They’re open to a few people (Amy thinks two or three) in town to work with the hospitals, and they have a few floors on standby in case first responders need a place to stay. So the hotel is technically open, but barely. More than half of their 160 person staff was furloughed.
“We had no choice but, in mid-march, to start that process,” Amrit said.
The Gills say they are, however, feeding their former employees’ families meals for free right now, and they hope to hire them back once they’re in a position to do so.
Along with baseball, they were supposed to have the NCAA tournament, proms, weddings nearly every weekend—regular business travel. None of that is happening here or at any other hotel in the area.
“Occupancy, which normally would have been in the 85 to 90 percent range is actually in the 5 to 7 percent range,” Amrit said.
Some other downtown hotels are completely closed right now: The Embassy Suites down the street, The Four Seasons, The Hyatt at the Arch, the brand-new Loews at Ballpark Village.
“It’s hard because they all had hundreds and hundreds of employees, hundreds of people who now are laid off,” Amy said.
The Gills say the sooner we get back to normal, the better shot the hotel industry has at surviving this, and they’re just as excited as you are for people to be able to get out of the house.
“Next year, when this all opens up or the next year when this all opens up, come and visit us. Plan a staycation,” Amy said. “It would just be nice to see everybody again.”