LITTLE ROCK, Ark — While some industries have begun to recover from COVID-19, others continue to struggle— specifically hotels.
The industry remains on what some described as "the brink of collapse."
According to a national survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, 74% of hotels will be forced to lay off more employees without further federal aid.
An action the majority of the hotels in Little Rock aren't strangers to.
The General Manager of AC Hotel Joshua Castle described it as a "difficult rollercoaster."
"Originally, we started with a staff of 53 and had to reduce that down to 6 in order to keep the hotel open," he said.
AC Hotel started welcoming guests in downtown Little Rock on Feb. 18.
"It was a great first 30 days."
According to Castle, COVID-19 forced them to shut basically all of their services down.
"We were just a hotel selling rooms and it was pretty bare bones," he said.
Castle said that lag continued for three more months with a slight sign of hope during the summer.
"We can see it coming. The people that are traveling, they want to get out, they want to travel," he said.
Even though their staff is up to 13 now and most of their services are back open, it is nowhere near business as usual, according to Castle.
"Normally during the week a downtown hotel like ours could sell out at least Tuesday through Thursday, so to get over the 50% mark— it's really good for COVID, but not good in general terms," he said.
Castle said AC Hotel is averaging at about 40% occupancy weekly, but according to Little Rock Convention and Visitor's Bureau CEO Gretchen Hall, they aren't in it alone.
"The hotel industry in Arkansas and across the country and right here in Little Rock, they're in survival mode," she said.
Hall described it as a long road to recovery.
"We're seeing very small increases, but they have tremendous losses and are continuing to have tremendous losses," she said.
Losses that have equated to revenue dropping 65% compared to 2019 and some local hotels are continuing to have layoffs of over 50% of their staff, according to Hall.
"A tremendous amount of hotels are saying now that they might not be able to survive another six months if we continue at this current rate," she said.
Hall said she is even more concerned going into the fall and winter months because that's when hotels really bank on a lot of business travel, which isn't happening a lot right now.