Analysts expect a wider rollout of coronavirus vaccines later this year to first aid a rebound in leisure travel, leaving business-travel-reliant hotel chains, including Marriott and smaller rival Hilton Worldwide, struggling for longer.
Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott estimated that the pace of bookings at its group business — which make up about 20 percent of its annual bookings — would drop by 57 percent this year compared with an already poor 2020.
But mass vaccinations are expected to slow the decline to between 25 and 30 percent in the second half of 2021, it said.
Marriott’s results come days after the death of its chief executive, Arne Sorenson. The company is expected to announce a new CEO in the next two weeks.
Its fourth-quarter revenue plunged 60 percent to $2.17 billion, missing analysts’ estimates of $2.4 billion, according to Refinitiv IBES data.
Quarterly net loss was $164 million, compared with a profit of $279 million a year earlier.
The company posted an annual net loss of $267 million, its first since 2009.
U.S. tries to reduce shipping disruptions
U.S. regulators stepped up the heat on ocean shipping companies and the seaport terminals some of them operate, seeking to smooth the disrupted flow of containers that are swamping America’s biggest ports and wreaking havoc on the nation’s strained supply chains.
The Federal Maritime Commission said it will order container carriers and port terminal operators servicing the Los Angeles and New York areas to “provide information on their policies and practices related to container returns and container availability for exporters.”
“Information received from parties receiving demands may be used as a basis for hearings, Commission enforcement action or further rule-making,” the FMC said in a statement Wednesday, without identifying the companies it’s targeting.
Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, which has an alliance with Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping, is among the operators of terminals at the L.A. port, as is a unit co-operated by Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp. France’s CMA CGM and China’s Cosco Shipping Holdings are among the biggest lines calling on Long Beach.
A focus of FMC member Rebecca Dye’s probe is the practice used by some shipping lines and terminal operators of tacking on fees for late pickup or overdue returns of containers. Truckers have complained those are unfair in times of heavy congestion. Although the FMC announced rules last year restricting them during periods of bottlenecks, Dye has said there hasn’t been universal adherence.
McDonald’s said it is tying 15 percent of executives’ bonuses to meeting targets including diversity and inclusion and began disclosing data on the racial makeup of its workforce, major steps by one of the largest U.S. companies to better reflect the population. Among the information McDonald’s is releasing for the first time is a full breakdown of U.S. employees by race, ethnicity and gender, a victory for transparency advocates and investors increasingly pressing companies to do more to address the country’s social inequality.
American Airlines Group and JetBlue Airways said they are launching the first phase of their partnership with codeshares on nearly 80 routes from New York and Boston. The joint announcement came even as the U.S. Justice Department and attorneys general in New York, Massachusetts and other jurisdictions continue to review the proposed tie-up.
10 a.m.: National Association of Realtors releases existing-home sales for January.
