Season’s Greetings and best wishes for the New Year to all our members and their families from all of us at HANYC!
The fitful nature of business caused by continually changing regulations, legislative bills in city and state halls inimical to our industry as well as labor issues all contributed to another taxing year for all of us. HANYC and its team took on these tasks squarely and is pleased to have had some notable successes.
As in the prior year, HANYC actively engaged with stakeholders in the City and State in several areas starting early in the year with an hour-long session with Mayor-elect Eric Adams during which we underscored the parlous state of the industry stemming from the covid crisis and the paucity of federal help. Mr. Adams went so far as to include our real-property tax agenda in-toto in his “100+ Steps Forward for NYC” plan.
By far the biggest “hit” we had was in steering, together with allies we had cultivated over the years in the affordable housing arena, a bill to require registration of short-term-rentals on platforms. Distressingly, unlike hotels, STRs did exceedingly well in 2020 even as we saw our revenue stream eviscerated. Other legislative efforts include an occupancy tax waiver resulting from a property tax reduction drive that won the unprecedented support of over half of the City Council and 3 Borough Presidents including Mayor-elect Eric Adams.
We successfully pushed back against two bills mandating “recall” rights for employees that would have added to the many burdens on the industry’s and further hampered its recovery. Our other legislative efforts include legislative tracking at the state level, repurposing the HONDA bill, temporary retail permits for liquor.
Early this year we engaged Pythia Public Affairs on a number of the foregoing issues. Pertinently, Pythia’s founder, Evan Thies, crafted Eric Adams’ policy proposals for his campaign and is his sole spokesperson. It is a relationship that has not only helped us in terms of the creation and efficacious deployment of campaigns to advance our causes but also one that ensures we have a seat at the table as the city transitions to its new executive and legislative leadership.
Early in the pandemic, the City of New York requested HANYC on an emergency basis to administer its FEMA funded Covid shelter program for the homeless. When we close the contract at the end of this year, HANYC would have paid out nearly $650m to over 60 hotels since its inception. Besides helping hotels that had little to no revenue source for months the program inured to our benefit in building relationships with City Hall and officials in the bureaucracy who will survive the De Blasio administration. Our CFO, Albert Fernandez and his team was instrumental in ensuring that this very administratively onerous program went without a single hitch for either the hotels or NYC government.
As was the case last year our labor counsel, David Rothfeld, and his team have been tirelessly working on a range of issues for the industry’s benefit from labor training to hotel reopening issues that include recall, seniority, changes in operational procedures, OSHA emergency standards, HERO act training as well as a host of other ongoing and often unpredictable issues brought on by the ongoing crisis.
We continued our efforts with the help of our consultants at LAKPR in the local, national and international press to highlight the plight of the industry and the need for remedial measures resulting in several hundred articles and several hours of TV exposure in outlets from NBC Channel 4 to Fox5 to international press such as the BBC, Asahi Shimbun, France 24, Rai & Skynews besides the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg News, Commercial Observer, Crain’s New York, the Daily Mail,, Business Traveler and AP News among others.
Despite the pandemic our VP, Niki Franzitta put together several virtual events with a few in-person towards the end of the year. These ranged from Covid-relief packages to Human trafficking training besides several Human Resources Directors meetings and in-person mixers. Additionally, we ran other specialized seminars such as STR (Smith Travel Research) as well as an in-person presentation by NYPD commissioner, Dermot Shea.
Our annual meeting on December 9th was a resounding success in terms of unprecedented in-person attendance with a highly regarded presentation by Mastercard on the macro and micro-economic situation in NYC’s tourism industry.
I would like to close by thanking all our members, the board and our Chair, Fred Grapstein for their steady support and active participation that enabled the successful carrying out of our initiatives over the year. I would also like to extend HANYC’s deep appreciation to the Allied members who joined our platform with a special thanks to the many who sponsored our numerous events, virtual and in-person.
We look forward to continuing to advocate strongly and effectively for the industry at City Hall, Albany and the Federal level with the help of our outstanding lobbying team at Kasirer and CMW Strategies in the coming year.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to any of us at any point on any issue that affects either your hotel or our industry.
