A lot of us in the industry have been watching this closely, and I’m curious how other managers are feeling about it.
I’ve always believed that if a booking brings more operational risk than revenue, it’s not worth it. Over the years I’ve had to ask Coast Guard groups to leave because a third party housing company was over $10k behind in payments. I’ve also denied city and county requests to use our meeting space as polling locations because of crowd control issues, protests, and the impact on daily operations like breakfast and staffing.
ICE reservations come with very real challenges. Staffing issues, protests in the parking lot, guests checking out early, and corporate and leisure guests choosing to stay elsewhere. Until now, I always assumed that as private businesses we had the right to refuse certain reservations for legitimate operational reasons.
With Hilton pulling a franchise over this, it feels like a line has been crossed. It starts to feel less like brand standards and more like being strong armed into accepting business that can actively hurt operations.
This sets a precedent that’s making me uneasy. If refusing ICE bookings for valid reasons can get a hotel deflagged, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Genuinely interested in how other GMs and managers are interpreting this and how you’re thinking about risk going forward.
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