Hotels Face Demand of Evacuees Colliding With Marathoners
New York City hotels are struggling with space shortages as runners traveling into town for this weekend’s marathon compete for lodging with locals renting rooms after their homes were damaged by Atlantic storm Sandy.
“Those marathon rooms were booked months ago,” said Karen Yam, a desk clerk at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Metropolitan on Lexington Avenue in midtown Manhattan. About 60 to 70 of the property’s 775 rooms will be occupied by people in town for the race, she said. “It’s been very difficult and frustrating to turn people down from downtown and the suburbs.”
Service has resumed at the area’s three major airports, and runners and their guests have already begun to arrive for the ING New York City Marathon on Nov. 4. Hotels, meanwhile, are already full of employees of firms such as Morgan Stanley (MS) and UBS AG who are renting rooms in Manhattan, along with other local residents unable or unwilling to return to homes ravaged by Sandy’s rain, wind and flooding.
Room shortages are further exacerbated by the mandatory closing of hotels such as the New York Marriott Downtown and the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton in lower Manhattan, the part of the borough most damaged by Sandy. In midtown, Le Parker Meridien and the Salisbury Hotel were evacuated following the partial collapse of a construction crane over West 57th Street.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-02/hotels-face-demand-of-evacuees-colliding-with-marathoners.html
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