(Bloomberg)—One of New York’s largest hotels is finally set to reopen.
The New York Hilton, shuttered by a pandemic that grounded business travelers and kept tourists at home, is scheduled to come back online Oct. 4, according to a representative for Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.
The hotel, on Sixth Avenue between 53rd and 54th streets, is exactly the type of property that has been battered by the pandemic. With nearly 1,900 rooms, it’s a staple of conferences and business events, which ground to a halt in March 2020 and have been slow to return amid the rise of the delta variant.
Owner Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. kept the hotel shuttered even as other local properties saw business pick up in recent months. Thomas Baltimore, the company’s chief executive officer, told investors in August that he wanted to “make sure that we open at the right time, given the size and complexity of that asset.”
New York hotels were 61% occupied in August, according to lodging data provider STR. That was a marked improvement from the same month in 2020, but still well off pre-pandemic norms, when August occupancies hovered around 90%.
© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.
