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The board of hotel real estate investment trust Sunstone Hotel Investors has named Chairman Douglas Pasquale interim CEO effective immediately, according to a news release. The board will use an executive search firm to help find a permanent CEO replacement.

The board of directors and former President and CEO John Arabia came to “a mutual agreement to separate,” the release states. “These actions were not related to any matter regarding the Company's financial condition, reported financial results, internal controls or disclosure controls and procedures.”

Arabia has served as president and CEO since January 2015. He joined Sunstone in April 2011 as executive vice president of corporate strategy and chief financial officer.

The complexity of traveling during the coronavirus pandemic has more travelers turning to travel agencies to help them navigate cancellations, delays, testing requirements and other issues, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“With the pandemic, our credibility and our necessity have gone off the charts, and I think we’re now advocates,” says Jennifer Wilson-Buttigieg, co-president of Valerie Wilson Travel, a New York-based leisure and corporate travel agency that is a unit of Frosch International Travel. “Travel is possible. It’s just difficult.”

Following the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines, U.S. hoteliers had hoped for a strong return of business travel this fall, but they are now changing those projections as the number of cases increase nationally, reports HNN’s Dana Miller.

Dury Kim, regional vice president of revenue management at Real Hospitality Group, said three weeks ago there was less resistance from the business traveler and an increased volume in advance purchase reservations. However, her company’s hotels have seen several city-wide conventions and trade shows cancel in September.

"There is still a lot of up-in-the-air mentality for the next month ... we have a lot of hotels in New York that rely on corporate strength, group, transient and international," she added.

After the cancellation of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in October due to concerns over the Delta variant, the city’s hospitality sector had hoped for a boost in tourism over the Labor Day weekend. Instead, Hurricane Ida has dashed those hopes, The New York Times reports.

Hotels reported being fully booked for the holiday weekend, and restaurant and bar staff were hoping tips from all the tourists would help them catch up on bills and rent, the article states. While homes and businesses in the city did not take on water from the storm, the city's ongoing power outage means no lights and air conditioning and limited means of preparing food.

Because the tourism infrastructure remains mostly intact, there's hope the tourists will return after power is restored to the city, said Kelly Schulz, vice president of communications for New Orleans & Company, the marketing organization for the city's tourism industry.

“We want people to understand this was not a Hurricane Katrina event for New Orleans,” she told the newspaper.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s latest numbers show U.S. payrolls grew by 235,000 in August, coming in well below expectations thanks to concerns of the Delta variant, The Wall Street Journal reports. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.2%.

The number of jobs added last month was also down from the 1.1 million jobs added in July and 962,000 added in June, the article states.

“Hiring was particularly weak in services sectors that involve in-person interaction,” the newspaper reports. “Employment in leisure and hospitality held steady after adding an average of 350,000 jobs a month over the previous six months. Retailers cut jobs in August.”