With a sharp decline in travel demand, nine times worse than September 11 and with lower room occupancy than during the Great Depression, our small business owners are struggling to survive. Many hotels are struggling to service their debt and keep their lights on, especially those with Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) loans as they have been unable to obtain urgently-needed debt relief. Without action to shore up commercial debt, especially CMBS loans, the hotel industry will experience mass foreclosures and permanent job losses which will snowball into a larger commercial real estate crisis impacting other segments of the economy. We applaud Members of Congress, especially Reps. Taylor, Lawson, Barr and Heck, and some 100 others, for their leadership in supporting small business hotel owners and employees by urging immediate action to keep hotels open for business so they can retain and rehire employees.
