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1. Omni Hotels Recovers After Cyberattack
Dallas-based Omni Hotels & Resorts said it has restored most of its systems following a cyberattack, the Dallas Morning News reports. The attack late last week caused a chain-wide outage that affected Omni's reservations systems, guestroom door locks and point-of-sales systems.
"Upon learning of this issue, Omni immediately took steps to shut down its systems to protect and contain its data," Omni said in a statement to the newspaper. "We apologize for the disruption and inconvenience this cyberattack is causing."
2. Eclipse Drives Up Hotel Prices
In a review of advertised hotel rates, the New York Times reports that hotels along the path of totality of Monday's solar eclipse have prices far above their normal rates.
One Super 8 hotel in Grayville, Illinois, showed a rate of $949 for a stay Sunday through Tuesday when its normal nightly rate is $95, according to the newspaper. The Ritz-Carlton in Dallas advertises an average rate of $7,600 a night for the same two-night stay when its price the next week is $1,329.
3. What US Hoteliers Expect This Summer
As U.S. hoteliers look over their business on the books this summer, they're seeing leisure demand looking similar to last year and down from the highs of the recovery, reports HNN's Bryan Wroten.
After a period of intense demand highs, there's an inevitable letdown, said Patrick Broderick, senior vice president of sales and revenue management for Davidson Hospitality Group’s resort division. It's a "two-and-a-half-year champagne effect that is now coming back."
4. US Economy Added 303,000 Jobs
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the economy added 303,000 jobs in March, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.8% from 3.9% in February, according to the Wall Street Journal. Wage growth, however, remained contained, growing 0.3% compared to February.
The volume of layoffs remains low while there's still a high number of unfilled jobs, the newspaper reports. There were 8.8 million job openings by the end of February. The number of job openings that are filled compared to unfilled positions was 5.3%. The rate of people quitting their jobs, however, has fallen to pre-pandemic levels.
5. India Central Bank Holds Rate
The Reserve Bank of India kept its policy repo rate, which is the interest rate for lending short-term funds to commercial banks, steady as economic growth remains strong, the Wall Street Journal reports. India's gross domestic product grew by 8.4% year over year for the quarter ending in December.
“Inflation has come down significantly but remains above the 4% target,” said Shaktikanta Das, governor of India's central bank. “Strong growth momentum together with our GDP projections…give us the policy space to unwaveringly focus on price stability.”